2 research outputs found
Hash Embeddings for Efficient Word Representations
We present hash embeddings, an efficient method for representing words in a
continuous vector form. A hash embedding may be seen as an interpolation
between a standard word embedding and a word embedding created using a random
hash function (the hashing trick). In hash embeddings each token is represented
by -dimensional embeddings vectors and one dimensional weight
vector. The final dimensional representation of the token is the product of
the two. Rather than fitting the embedding vectors for each token these are
selected by the hashing trick from a shared pool of embedding vectors. Our
experiments show that hash embeddings can easily deal with huge vocabularies
consisting of millions of tokens. When using a hash embedding there is no need
to create a dictionary before training nor to perform any kind of vocabulary
pruning after training. We show that models trained using hash embeddings
exhibit at least the same level of performance as models trained using regular
embeddings across a wide range of tasks. Furthermore, the number of parameters
needed by such an embedding is only a fraction of what is required by a regular
embedding. Since standard embeddings and embeddings constructed using the
hashing trick are actually just special cases of a hash embedding, hash
embeddings can be considered an extension and improvement over the existing
regular embedding types
FindZebra online search delving into rare disease case reports using natural language processing.
Early diagnosis is crucial for well-being and life quality of the rare disease patient. Access to the most complete knowledge about diseases through intelligent user interfaces can play an important role in supporting the physician reaching the correct diagnosis. Case reports may offer information about heterogeneous phenotypes which often further complicate rare disease diagnosis. The rare disease search engine FindZebra.com is extended to also access case report abstracts extracted from PubMed for several diseases. A search index for each disease is built in Apache Solr adding age, sex and clinical features extracted using text segmentation to enhance the specificity of search. Clinical experts performed retrospective validation of the search engine, utilising real-world Outcomes Survey data on Gaucher and Fabry patients. Medical experts evaluated the search results as being clinically relevant for the Fabry patients and less clinically relevant for the Gaucher patients. The shortcomings for Gaucher patients mainly reflect a mismatch between the current understanding and treatment of the disease and how it is reported in PubMed, notably in the older case reports. In response to this observation, a filter for the publication date was added in the final version of the tool available from deep.findzebra.com/ with = gaucher, fabry, hae (Hereditary angioedema)