Natural language processing (NLP) of Internet conversations to evaluate prostate cancer (PC) patients’ perceptions of active surveillance (AS).

14 Background: Less than 10% of qualifying PC patients receive primary management with AS. Qualitative research aimed at identifying patient acceptance of AS has been identified as a national health research priority. The primary objective of this study was to determine if NLP of anonymous internet conversations (ICs) could be utilized to identify unmet public needs regarding AS. Methods: After obtaining IRB approval, English-language ICs regarding PC treatment with AS from 2002-2012 were identified using a novel internet search methodology. Web spiders were developed to identify, mine, and gather content from the internet for ICs centered on AS. All ICs identified were screened programmatically to remove any not-on-topic ICs. Collection of ICs was not restricted to any specific geographic region of origin. NLP was used to evaluate content and perform a sentiment analysis. Conversations were scored as positive, negative, or neutral. A sentiment index (SI) was subsequently calculated according to the follo...