Combining deep learning and fuzzy logic to predict rare ICD-10 codes from clinical notes

Computer assisted coding (CAC) of clinical text into standardized classifications such as ICD-10 is an important challenge. For frequently used ICD-10 codes, deep learning approaches have been quite successful. For rare codes, however, the problem is still outstanding. To improve performance for rare codes, a pipeline is proposed that takes advantage of the ICD-10 code hierarchy to combine semantic capabilities of deep learning and the flexibility of fuzzy logic. The data used are discharge summaries in Swedish in the medical speciality of gastrointestinal diseases. Using our pipeline, fuzzy matching computation time is reduced and accuracy of the top 10 hits of the rare codes is also improved. While the method is promising, further work is required before the pipeline can be part of a usable prototype. Code repository: https://github.com/icd-coding/zeroshot.