Natural Language Processing for Headache Medicine

Headache disorders are diagnosed by clinical history taking and applying the criteria provided within the International Classification of Headache Disorders Third Edition (ICHD-3). To help patients and physicians in making the correct diagnosis, digital technologies based on natural language processing (NLP) approaches may help to identify headache disorders within naturally patient-provided speech. The research aims to develop statistical models through machine-learning NLP applications for the accurate and precise classification of headache disorders with headache expert given ICHD-3 diagnosis as the gold standard. Furthermore, the research also aims to develop statistical models through machine-learning NLP applications for the estimation of impact scores derived from validated headache questionnaires by using texts as input. Patients from the tertiary headache clinic will be recruited to provide oral narrative textual descriptions of their headache attack characteristics and burden of disease related to their headache disorders. The goal of the research is to develop accessible, evidence-based digital medical tools as low-effort applications for the correct diagnosis of headache disorders and estimation of burden of disease due to headache disorders.