Drug Name Correction of Medication Records from Aeromedical Certification Exams

Misspelled drug names have been introduced in Federal Aviation Administration medication records from aeromedical certification exams because of typographical errors and from transcriptions of hand-written medical prescriptions. The correction of misspelled drug names contributes to aviation safety by improving the accuracy of the records and database quality needed for aeromedical research and operational queries. This report describes development of an automatic spell correction system to correct misspelled drug names. This study compares candidate algorithms using linguistic and context metrics as well as reference dictionaries. A selection confidence index is introduced to rank the fuzzy matching results. The best correction rates are over 96% for the validation data set and approximately 93% for the much larger data set of records. To further improve the correction, more effort might be made in correcting cases in which one correct drug name or English word is misused as another drug name, refining the reference dictionary, interpreting abbreviations and strings with multiple words squeezed together, and using machine learning algorithms.

• Record URL:
  https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/2020s/media/202123.pdf
• Corporate Authors:

  FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute

  6500 S MacArthur Boulevard
  Oklahoma City, OK  United States  73125

  Federal Aviation Administration

  Medical Specialties Division
  800 Independence Avenue, SW
  Washington, DC  United States  20591

  Federal Aviation Administration

  Office of Aerospace Medicine, 800 Independence Avenue, SW
  Washington, DC  United States  20591
• Authors:
  • Ding, Haibiao
  • Copeland, Kyle
  • Greenhaw, Richard
  • Mills, Bill
  • Hileman, Christy
  • Kieu, Vinh
• Publication Date: 2021-6

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 23p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accuracy; Aviation; Certification; Data quality; Drugs; Errors; Examinations; Fuzzy algorithms; Medical records; Medication
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01778629
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: DOT/FAA/AM-21/23
• Files: TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
• Created Date: Aug 3 2021 3:31PM