Unstructured

Unfortunately, much of the data in an EHR (such as that in a clinical note) consists of free-form text; this is known as unstructured data. Provider notes generated as part of healthcare delivery provide extensive information regarding the patient and the progress of a hospital visit. Depending on the complexity of the diagnoses, radiology reports, pathology reports, and other diagnoses, notes would also include unstructured information. While unstructured data is capable of communicating far more extensive and valuable information about the patient, analysis of such data poses much more of a challenge than that of structured data.