Automatic Assignment for Abstraction

2024-03-29

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Automatic Task Assignment

When setting up automatic task assignment, the abstraction administrator defines named configurations for the different types of documents to be abstracted and different disease groups those documents cover. The administrator can also create specific project groups of area experts for these documents so that automatic assignment can draw from the appropriate pool of people.

Project Group Curation

The abstraction administrator uses project groups to identify the people who should be assigned to abstract the particular documents expected. It might be sufficient to simply create a general "Abstractors" group, or perhaps more specific groups might be appropriate, each with a unique set of members:

  • Lung Abstractors
  • Multiple Myeloma Abstractors
  • Brain Abstractors
  • Thoracic Abstractors
When creating document processing configurations, you can select one or more groups from which to pull assignees for abstraction and review.

  • Create the groups you expect to need via (Admin) > Folder > Permissions > Project Groups.
  • On the Permissions tab, add the groups to the relevant abstraction permission role:
    • Abstractor groups: add to Document Abstractor.
    • Reviewer groups: add to Abstraction Reviewer.
  • Neither of these abstraction-specific roles carries any other permission to read or edit information in the folder. All abstractors and reviewers will also require the Editor role in the project in order to record information. Unless you have already granted such access to your pool of users through other groups, also add each abstractor and reviewer group to the the Editor role.
  • Next add the appropriate users to each of the groups.

While the same person may be eligible to both abstract some documents and review others, no document will be reviewed by the same person who did the abstraction.

NLP Document Processing Configurations

Named task assignment configurations are created by an administrator using an NLP Document Processing Configurations web part. Configurations include the following fields:

  • Name
  • DocumentType
    • Pathology Reports
    • Cytogenetics Reports
    • Clinical Reports
    • All Documents (including the above)
  • Disease Groups - check one or more of the disease groups listed. Available disease groups are configured via a metadata file. The disease group control for a document is generated during the initial processing during upload. Select "All" to define a configuration that will apply to any disease group not covered by a more specific configuration.
  • ManualAbstractPct - the percentage of documents to assign for manual abstraction (default is 5%).
  • ManualAbstractReviewPct - the percentage of manually abstracted documents to assign for review (default is 5%).
  • EngineAbstractReviewPct - the percentage of automatically abstracted documents to assign for review (default is 100%).
  • MinConfidenceLevelPct - the minimum confidence level required from an upstream NLP engine to skip review of those engine results (default is 75%).
  • Assignee - use checkboxes to choose the group(s) from which abstractors should be chosen for this document and disease type.
  • Status - can be "active" or "inactive"
Other fields are tracked internally and can provide additional information to assist in assigning abstractors:
  • DocumentsProcessed
  • LastAbstractor
  • LastReviewer
You can define different configurations for different document types and different disease groups. For instance, standard pathology reports might be less likely to need manual abstraction than cytogenetics reports, but more likely to need review of automated abstraction. Reports about brain diseases might be more likely to need manual abstraction than those about lung diseases. The document type "All Documents" and the disease group "All" are used for processing of any documents not covered by a more specific configuration. If there is a type-specific configuration defined and active for a given document type, it will take precedence over the "All Documents" configuration. When you are defining a new configuration, you will see a message if it will override an existing configuration for a given type.

You can also define multiple configurations for a given document type. For example, you could have a configuration requiring higher levels of review and only activate it during a training period for a new abstractor. By selecting which configuration is active at any given time for each document type, different types of documents can get different patterns of assignment for abstraction. If no configuration is active, all assignments must be done manually.

Outcomes of Automatic Document Assignment

The following table lists what the resulting status for a document will be for all the possible combinations of whether engine abstraction is performed and whether abstractors or reviewers are assigned.

Engine Abstraction?Abstractor Auto-Assigned?Reviewer Auto-Assigned?Document Status Outcome
YYYReady for initial abstraction; to reviewer when complete
YYNReady for initial abstraction; straight to approved when complete
YNYReady for review (a common case when testing engine algorithms)
YNNReady for manual assignment
NYYReady for initial abstraction; to reviewer when complete
NYNReady for initial abstraction; straight to approved when complete
NNYNot valid; there would be nothing to review
NNNReady for manual assignment

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