SemEval-2015 Task 6: Clinical TempEval

[Based on the Clinical TempEval draft proposal]

Clinical TempEval brings the temporal information extraction tasks of previous TempEvals to the clinical domain, using clinical notes and pathology reports for cancer patients from the Mayo Clinic. This follows recent interest in temporal information extraction for the clinical domain (e.g., the i2b2 2012 shared task) and broadens our understanding of the language of time beyond newswire-specific expressions. As in prior TempEvals, Clinical TempEval focuses on discrete, well-defined tasks which allow rapid, reliable and repeatable evaluation:

• TS: identifying the spans of time expressions
• ES: Identifying the spans of event expressions
• TA: identifying the attributes of time expressions
  • type=DATE, TIME, DURATION, QUANTIFIER, PREPOSTEXP or SET
  • value=TIMEX3 value string as defined by TimeML
• EA: identifying the attributes of event expressions
  • type=N/A, ASPECTUAL or EVIDENTIAL
  • polarity=POS or NEG
  • degree=N/A, MOST or LITTLE
  • modality=ACTUAL, HEDGED, HYPOTHETICAL or GENERIC
• DR: identifying the relation between an event and the document creation time
  • docTimeRel=BEFORE, OVERLAP, BEFORE-OVERLAP or AFTER
• CR: identifying narrative container relations (CONTAINS a.k.a. INCLUDES)

For example, given the text:

April 23, 2014: The patient did not have any postoperative bleeding so we will resume chemotherapy with a larger bolus on Friday even if there is slight nausea.

Systems should identify:

• TS:
  • April 23, 2014
  • postoperative
  • Friday
• ES:
  • bleeding
  • resume
  • chemotherapy
  • bolus
  • nausea
• TA:
  • April 23, 2014: type=DATE, value=2014-04-23
  • postoperative: type=PREPOSTEXP
  • Friday: type=DATE, value=2014-04-25
• EA:
  • bleeding: type=N/A, degree=N/A, polarity=NEG, modality=ACTUAL
  • resume: type=ASPECTUAL, degree=N/A, polarity=POS, modality=ACTUAL
  • chemotherapy: type=N/A, degree=N/A, polarity=POS, modality=ACTUAL
  • bolus: type=N/A, degree=N/A, polarity=POS, modality=ACTUAL
  • nausea: type=N/A, degree=LITTLE, polarity=POS, modality=HYPOTHETICAL
• DR:
  • bleeding BEFORE docTime
  • resume AFTER docTime
  • chemotherapy AFTER docTime
  • bolus AFTER docTime
  • nausea AFTER docTime
• CR:
  • postoperative CONTAINS bleeding
  • Friday CONTAINS resume
  • Friday CONTAINS bolus

Interested Participants

Please register on the SemEval 2015 site and join the Clinical TempEval Google Group.