Exploratory Analysis of Animal Bites Events in the City of Buenos Aires Using Data from Electronic Health Records

摘要

Rabies is a viral disease transmitted by rabid animal bites or injuries. It is usually preventable with proper wound care, post- exposure prophylaxis and animal zoonoses programs [1]. In order to face this issue, it is important for the health care system to track animal bites and other animal related injuries. Animal bite information is usually registered in free-text form, within the electronic health record implemented in the public health system of the city of Buenos Aires. Thus, we aimed to develop an NLP pipeline that allowed us to extract animal-bites related information from clinical notes and represent it in a dashboard. Rabies is estimated to cause 59 000 human deaths annually in over 150 countries. Due to widespread underreporting and uncertain estimates, it is likely that this number is a gross underestimate of the true burden of disease. 99% of rabies cases are dog-mediated and the burden of disease is disproportionally borne by rural poor populations, with approximately half of cases attributable to children under 15 [2].