Using cohorts in a question answering system
First Claim
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1. An apparatus comprising:
- at least one processor;
a memory coupled to the at least one processor;
a cohort analysis mechanism residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor that answers a question by identifying cohorts for a person in the question,wherein the cohorts are persons meeting a threshold of similar attributes to the person of the question and available in a corpus of data; and
wherein the cohort analysis mechanism aggregates data of the cohorts, extracts answers and evidence from data of the cohorts and combines and ranks the answers and evidence from data of the cohorts to answer the question.
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Abstract
A cohort analysis mechanism analyzes cohorts with similar attributes to extrapolate additional knowledge and answer a question in a question answering system. The cohort analysis mechanism identifies cohorts for an entity of the question and extracts relevant data concerning the cohorts. The cohort analysis mechanism aggregates the relevant information for evidence scoring and answer scoring to answer a question posed to the question answering system. The aggregating of the data includes combining and ranking answers from the cohorts, gathering evidence and then answering the question with the gathered evidence.
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Citations
15 Claims
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1. An apparatus comprising:
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at least one processor; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; a cohort analysis mechanism residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor that answers a question by identifying cohorts for a person in the question, wherein the cohorts are persons meeting a threshold of similar attributes to the person of the question and available in a corpus of data; and wherein the cohort analysis mechanism aggregates data of the cohorts, extracts answers and evidence from data of the cohorts and combines and ranks the answers and evidence from data of the cohorts to answer the question. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. An apparatus comprising:
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at least one processor; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; a cohort analysis mechanism residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor that answers a question by identifying cohorts for a person in the question, wherein the cohorts are persons meeting a threshold of similar attributes to the person of the question and available in a corpus of data wherein the attributes include age, race and symptoms; wherein the cohort analysis mechanism aggregates data of the cohorts, extracts answers and evidence from data of the cohorts, combines and ranks the answers and evidence from data of the cohorts and uses the ranked answers and evidence to gather statistically significant evidence of the cohorts to answer the question, wherein the person in the question is a patient, the question is a medical question for the patient and the cohort analysis mechanism processes the medical history of the patient and finds the cohorts from medical histories of other patients to predict the answer from the cohorts; and wherein the cohort analysis mechanism is part of a question answering application that answers a natural language question. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12)
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13. A computer-readable article of manufacture comprising:
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a cohort analysis mechanism that answers a question by identifying cohorts for a person in the question, wherein the cohorts are persons meeting a threshold of similar attributes to the person of the question and available in a corpus of data wherein the attributes include age, race and symptoms; wherein the cohort analysis mechanism aggregates data of the cohorts, extracts answers and evidence from data of the cohorts, combines and ranks the answers and evidence from data of the cohorts and uses the ranked answers and evidence to gather statistically significant evidence of the cohorts to answer the question, wherein the person in the question is a patient, the question is a medical question for the patient and the cohort analysis mechanism processes the medical history of the patient and finds the cohorts from medical histories of other patients to predict the answer from the cohorts; and a non-transitory computer recordable medium bearing the cohort analysis mechanism. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15)
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Specification