Bootstrapping Clinical Concept Extraction with Self-Training

In the clinical domain, annotated clinical records are not only expensive but also often unavailable for research due to patient privacy and confidentiality requirements. The challenge is how to train effective clinical concept extraction system especially with small amount of training data. To address the limited supervision problem of insufficient labeled training examples, self-training style semi-supervised bootstrapping approach to concept extraction system is proposed. In self-training a classifier is trained from an initially small amount of human annotated data, and then used to label unlabeled data. The machine-labeled data is then added to the original data set, and the classifier is retrained iteratively. For labeling clinical concepts, Conditional Random Fields (CRF) is chosen due to its promising performance in many sequence labeling tasks

An Approach to Handle Idioms and Phrasal Verbs in English to Myanmar Machine Translation System

The structure of idioms and phrasal verbs areflexible in nature hence quite complex and challengingto handle in machine translation system. In this paper,an approach to handle idioms and phrasal verbs forEnglish-Myanmar machine translation is proposed.This technique consists of two phases, the analyzingphase and the grouping phase. In the analyzing phase,the given English sentence is analyzed to find whetherit contains any phrasal verbs or idioms. In thegrouping phase, if any phrasal verb or idiom is foundin the given sentence, it will be grouped into a singleunit and it will be categorized with a special tag inorder to denote it as the phrasal verb or idiom. Theproposed approach can be incorporated with rulebased English-Myanmar machine translation systemwith some modifications and can increase the accuracyof translation

Inadequate knowledge about snakebite envenoming symptoms and application of harmful first aid methods in the community in high snakebite incidence areas of Myanmar.

INTRODUCTION:Every year millions of people in developing countries suffer from snakebite, causing a large number of deaths and long term complications. Prevention and appropriate first aid could reduce the incidence and improve the health outcomes for those who suffer bites. However, many communities where snakebite is a major issue suffer from a lack of information about prevention and first aid measures that a family or community member could take to prevent severe envenoming, complications and poor outcomes. Myanmar suffers from a high burden of snakebites with a large number of deaths. As part of a health services and community development program, a community survey was conducted to identify communities' knowledge about snakebite and their sequelae, and knowledge and practice about first aid and health services use. METHOD:4,276 rural residents of Kyaukse and Madaya townships in the Mandalay region were recruited by cluster sampling, involving random selection of 144 villages and random sampling of 30 households from each village. One adult member of each household was interviewed using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS:The incidence of snakebite was 116/100,000 people. Respondents reported 15 different types of snakes in the area, with Russell's Viper, Cobra and Green snakes as the most common. 88% of the people informed that working in the fields and forests was when most of the bites occur. A majority knew about snakebite prevention methods such as wearing long boots. However, only a few people knew about the specific symptoms caused by snakebites. Only 39% knew about the correct methods of first aid. More than 60% mentioned tourniquet as a first aid method, though this may cause significant complications such as ischaemia of the limb. 88% said that they would take a snakebite victim to a government hospital, and 58% mentioned availability of antivenom as the reason for doing this. At the same time, the majority mentioned that traditional methods existed for first aid and treatment and 25% mentioned at least one harmful traditional method as an effective measure that they might use. CONCLUSION:The community is aware of snakebites as a major public health issue and know how to prevent them. However, the high incidence of snakebites point to lack of application of preventive methods. The community recognise the need for treatment with antivenom. However, inadequate knowledge about appropriate first aid methods, and a reliance on using tourniquets require a targeted education program. Existing knowledge in communities, albeit insufficient, provides a good starting point for mass media educational campaigns

Adverse Drug Reactions in Selected Wards of the Yangon General Hospital and Yangon Specialty Hospital During the First Quarter of 2019 : An Active Pharmacovigilance Study in Myanmar

Previous studies in Europe and the USA have reported a high prevalence of adverse drug reactions (ADRs), but data on local ADRs in Myanmar are sparse. Our objective was to study ADRs in patients admitted to selected wards of Yangon General Hospital (YGH) and Yangon Specialty Hospital (YSH), Myanmar. This was a prospective observational study in three hospital wards during the first quarter of 2019. Suspected ADRs were carefully investigated in a face-to-face interview with each patient and via review of clinical records. Patients transferred to other wards or discharged were followed-up by the researchers until day 28 after admission. ADRs were divided into those that (1) led to the admission and (2) occurred during the hospital stay or after discharge (up to day 28 after admission). A total of 65 ADRs were identified, with 47 (29.4%) of 160 patients experiencing at least one ADR. Among these, 16 (24.6%) had led to hospital admission and 49 (75.4%) occurred in 31 patients during their hospital stay. Of 160 patients, 21 had taken at least one herbal remedy and six of these developed an ADR. Five ADR-drug associations (hypokalaemia with methylprednisolone, increased transaminase levels with standard antituberculosis drugs, upper gastrointestinal bleeding with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, constipation with tramadol, and increased transaminase levels with herbal remedies) represented 18 (27.7%) of the 65 ADRs in this study. According to the Schumock and Thornton preventability scale, more than half of these ADRs (35 [53.9%]) were preventable. The present study highlights the existence of ADRs among patients attending these hospitals. The implementation of active pharmacovigilance in hospitals could be a helpful first step to improving the awareness of unwanted effects of medicines and patient safety, as well as a way to strengthen the national pharmacovigilance system in countries such as Myanmar. The online version of this article (10.1007/s40801-020-00180-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Community Members’ knowledge about Cobra bite symptoms.

Community Members’ knowledge about Cobra bite symptoms.</p

Community members’ knowledge about the first aid.

Community members’ knowledge about the first aid.</p