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Natural Language Processing and Oncology: Unlikely Allies in the Fight Against Cancer

Natural Language Processing (NLP) refers to the ability of computers to parse spoken, written, and visual speech acts with the ultimate goal of human-level performance. Applications of this technology range widely, from text message prediction to automatic translation, but, perhaps surprisingly, NLP systems have increasingly been adapted to medical research. The focus of this piece will narrow in on oncological research, which, to one new to the field of artificial intelligence, may seem incongruous with computational linguistics. However, there is a rich application of NLP in several studies from around the world, and it has become clear that computational linguists have a necessary skill to contribute in the fight against cancer.