DEFINDER: Rule-based Methods for the Extraction of Medical Terminology and their Associated Definitions from On-line Text

INTRODUCTION The problem addressed in this paper concerns the automatic identification and extraction of medical terms along with their definitions and modifiers from full text consumer-oriented medical articles. The system, DEFINDER (Definition Finder), uses rule-based techniques. The output of our system can be used in several applications: creation and/or enhancement of on-line terminological resources, summarization and text categorization according to level of expertise, e.g. lay vs. technical.