A neural network approach for understanding patient experiences of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) through a social media listening study (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The abundance of online content contributed by patients is a rich source of insights about the lived experience of disease. We present a novel neural network approach to identify and explore a lexicon of community words and phrases used by patients to describe their symptoms, and show its utility for the life-threatening chronic lung disease COPD. Our findings demonstrate the potential of neural networks to gain a quantitative patient-focused understanding about how each distinct COPD symptom contributes to the burden of chronic and acute respiratory illness. This approach can be readily applied to other disease areas in which there exists sufficient online content contributed by patients and caregivers.