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Patient Forum Question Answering

Question answering and response classification for patient health forum posts, categorizing responses by type (medical advice, experience sharing, information request, emotional support). Based on SemEval-2022 Task 6 (Akhtar et al.).

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Configuration Fileconfig.yaml

# Patient Forum Question Answering
# Based on Akhtar et al., SemEval 2022
# Paper: https://aclanthology.org/2022.semeval-1.75/
# Dataset: https://github.com/Akhtar-SemEval2022-Task6
#
# This task asks annotators to answer patient forum questions and classify
# the type of response that would be most appropriate. The categories
# reflect different communicative functions in health forums.
#
# Response Type Labels:
# - Medical Advice: Specific medical guidance or treatment suggestions
# - Experience Sharing: Personal experiences with similar conditions
# - Information Request: Asking for more details or clarification
# - Emotional Support: Empathetic support and encouragement

annotation_task_name: "Patient Forum Question Answering"
task_dir: "."

data_files:
  - sample-data.json

item_properties:
  id_key: "id"
  text_key: "text"

output_annotation_dir: "annotation_output/"
output_annotation_format: "json"

port: 8000
server_name: localhost

annotation_schemes:
  - annotation_type: text
    name: answer
    description: "Write an appropriate answer to this patient forum question"

  - annotation_type: radio
    name: response_type
    description: "What type of response is most appropriate for this question?"
    labels:
      - "Medical Advice"
      - "Experience Sharing"
      - "Information Request"
      - "Emotional Support"
    keyboard_shortcuts:
      "Medical Advice": "1"
      "Experience Sharing": "2"
      "Information Request": "3"
      "Emotional Support": "4"
    tooltips:
      "Medical Advice": "The question calls for specific medical guidance or treatment suggestions"
      "Experience Sharing": "The question would benefit from hearing personal experiences with similar conditions"
      "Information Request": "More details are needed before a meaningful response can be given"
      "Emotional Support": "The poster primarily needs empathetic support and encouragement"

annotation_instructions: |
  You will see a question posted on a patient health forum along with the forum category.
  1. Read the question carefully.
  2. Write an appropriate response to the question.
  3. Classify what type of response is most appropriate (medical advice, experience sharing,
     information request, or emotional support).
  Note: Do not provide actual medical diagnoses. Focus on the communicative function.

html_layout: |
  <div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 800px; margin: auto;">
    <div style="background: #ecfdf5; border: 1px solid #a7f3d0; border-radius: 8px; padding: 12px; margin-bottom: 12px;">
      <strong style="color: #065f46;">Forum Category:</strong>
      <span style="font-size: 15px; margin-left: 8px;">{{forum_category}}</span>
    </div>
    <div style="background: #f0f9ff; border: 1px solid #bae6fd; border-radius: 8px; padding: 16px; margin-bottom: 16px;">
      <strong style="color: #0369a1;">Patient Question:</strong>
      <p style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.7; margin: 8px 0 0 0;">{{text}}</p>
    </div>
  </div>

allow_all_users: true
instances_per_annotator: 50
annotation_per_instance: 2
allow_skip: true
skip_reason_required: false

Sample Datasample-data.json

[
  {
    "id": "patient_qa_001",
    "text": "I was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and my doctor put me on metformin. I've been experiencing stomach cramps and diarrhea for the past week. Is this normal? Should I stop taking the medication?",
    "forum_category": "Diabetes"
  },
  {
    "id": "patient_qa_002",
    "text": "My mother was just told she has early-stage Alzheimer's. I feel completely overwhelmed and don't know how to cope. Has anyone else gone through this with a parent?",
    "forum_category": "Caregiving"
  }
]

// ... and 8 more items

Get This Design

View on GitHub

Clone or download from the repository

Quick start:

git clone https://github.com/davidjurgens/potato-showcase.git
cd potato-showcase/semeval/2022/task06-patient-forum-qa
potato start config.yaml

Details

Annotation Types

textradio

Domain

NLPBiomedicalSemEval

Use Cases

Question AnsweringHealth Forum AnalysisPatient Support

Tags

semevalsemeval-2022shared-taskpatient-forumqahealthmedical

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