Layout-Aware Semi-automatic Information Extraction for Pharmaceutical Documents

Pharmaceutical companies and regulatory authorities are also affected by the current digitalization process and transform their paper-based, document-oriented communication to a structured, digital information exchange. The documents exchanged so far contain a huge amount of information that needs to be transformed into a structured format to enable a more efficient communication in the future. In such a setting, it is important that the information extracted from documents is very accurate as the information is used in a legal, regulatory process and also for the identification of unknown adverse effects of medicinal products that might be a threat to patients' health. In this paper, we present our layout-aware semi-automatic information extraction system LASIE that combines techniques from rule-based information extraction, flexible data management, and semantic information management in a user-centered design. We applied the system in a case study with an industrial partner and achieved very satisfying results.