Advancing Chinese biomedical text mining with community challenges.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to review the recent advances in community challenges for biomedical text mining in China. METHODS: We collected information of evaluation tasks released in community challenges of biomedical text mining, including task description, dataset description, data source, task type and related links. A systematic summary and comparative analysis were conducted on various biomedical natural language processing tasks, such as named entity recognition, entity normalization, attribute extraction, relation extraction, event extraction, text classification, text similarity, knowledge graph construction, question answering, text generation, and large language model evaluation. RESULTS: We identified 39 evaluation tasks from 6 community challenges that spanned from 2017 to 2023. Our analysis revealed the diverse range of evaluation task types and data sources in biomedical text mining. We explored the potential clinical applications of these community challenge tasks from a translational biomedical informatics perspective. We compared with their English counterparts, and discussed the contributions, limitations, lessons and guidelines of these community challenges, while highlighting future directions in the era of large language models. CONCLUSION: Community challenge evaluation competitions have played a crucial role in promoting technology innovation and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration in the field of biomedical text mining. These challenges provide valuable platforms for researchers to develop state-of-the-art solutions.

Does Market-Based Environmental Regulation Improve the Residents' Health: Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on DID.

Improving the residents' health is an important strategy for addressing the declining population dividend in China under the new development paradigm. Based on the panel data of 290 prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2021, this paper uses environmental tax as a quasi-natural experiment, and adopts a DID model to explore the impact of market-based environmental regulation on the residents' health. The results show that the implementation of environmental tax can significantly reduce the population mortality rate, indicating an enhancement in residents' health outcomes. Mechanism analysis shows that environmental tax mainly relies on air quality to improve the residents' health. Also, the heath effect of environmental tax will be effective with the increase of income, and it's stronger in administrative border areas. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect of environmental tax on residents' health in western regions and resource-based cities is significantly stronger than those in central and eastern regions and non-resource-based cities. This paper provides new evidence for a comprehensive understanding of the impact of market-based environmental regulations on residents' well-being, offering insights for the implementation of green development strategies.

RARPKB: a knowledge-guide decision support platform for personalized robot-assisted surgery in prostate cancer.

BACKGROUND: Robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) has emerged as a pivotal surgical intervention for the treatment of prostate cancer (PCa). However, the complexity of clinical cases, heterogeneity of PCa, and limitations in physician expertise pose challenges to rational decision-making in RARP. To address these challenges, the authors aimed to organize the knowledge of previously complex cohorts and establish an online platform named the RARP knowledge base (RARPKB) to provide reference evidence for personalized treatment plans. MATERIALS AND METHODS: PubMed searches over the past two decades were conducted to identify publications describing RARP. The authors collected, classified, and structured surgical details, patient information, surgical data, and various statistical results from the literature. A knowledge-guided decision-support tool was established using MySQL, DataTable, ECharts, and JavaScript. ChatGPT-4 and two assessment scales were used to validate and compare the platform. RESULTS: The platform comprised 583 studies, 1589 cohorts, 1 911 968 patients, and 11 986 records, resulting in 54 834 data entries. The knowledge-guided decision support tool provide personalized surgical plan recommendations and potential complications on the basis of patients' baseline and surgical information. Compared with ChatGPT-4, RARPKB outperformed in authenticity (100% vs. 73%), matching (100% vs. 53%), personalized recommendations (100% vs. 20%), matching of patients (100% vs. 0%), and personalized recommendations for complications (100% vs. 20%). Postuse, the average System Usability Scale score was 88.88±15.03, and the Net Promoter Score of RARPKB was 85. The knowledge base is available at: http://rarpkb.bioinf.org.cn . CONCLUSIONS: The authors introduced the pioneering RARPKB, the first knowledge base for robot-assisted surgery, with an emphasis on PCa. RARPKB can assist in personalized and complex surgical planning for PCa to improve its efficacy. RARPKB provides a reference for the future applications of artificial intelligence in clinical practice.

OligoM-Cancer: A multidimensional information platform for deep phenotyping of heterogenous oligometastatic cancer.

Patients with oligometastatic cancer (OMC) exhibit better response to local therapeutic interventions and a more treatable tendency than those with polymetastatic cancers. However, studies on OMC are limited and lack effective integration for systematic comparison and personalized application, and the diagnosis and precise treatment of OMC remain controversial. The application of large language models in medicine remains challenging because of the requirement of high-quality medical data. Moreover, these models must be enhanced using precise domain-specific knowledge. Therefore, we developed the OligoM-Cancer platform (http://oligo.sysbio.org.cn), pioneering knowledge curation that depicts various aspects of oligometastases spectrum, including markers, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy choices. A user-friendly website was developed using HTML, FLASK, MySQL, Bootstrap, Echarts, and JavaScript. This platform encompasses comprehensive knowledge and evidence of phenotypes and their associated factors. With 4059 items of literature retrieved, OligoM-Cancer includes 1345 valid publications and 393 OMC-associated factors. Additionally, the included clinical assistance tools enhance the interpretability and credibility of clinical translational practice. OligoM-Cancer facilitates knowledge-guided modeling for deep phenotyping of OMC and potentially assists large language models in supporting specialised oligometastasis applications, thereby enhancing their generalization and reliability.

Intelligent medicine in focus: the 5 stages of evolution in robot-assisted surgery for prostate cancer in the past 20 years and future implications.

Robot-assisted surgery has evolved into a crucial treatment for prostate cancer (PCa). However, from its appearance to today, brain-computer interface, virtual reality, and metaverse have revolutionized the field of robot-assisted surgery for PCa, presenting both opportunities and challenges. Especially in the context of contemporary big data and precision medicine, facing the heterogeneity of PCa and the complexity of clinical problems, it still needs to be continuously upgraded and improved. Keeping this in mind, this article summarized the 5 stages of the historical development of robot-assisted surgery for PCa, encompassing the stages of emergence, promotion, development, maturity, and intelligence. Initially, safety concerns were paramount, but subsequent research and engineering advancements have focused on enhancing device efficacy, surgical technology, and achieving precise multi modal treatment. The dominance of da Vinci robot-assisted surgical system has seen this evolution intimately tied to its successive versions. In the future, robot-assisted surgery for PCa will move towards intelligence, promising improved patient outcomes and personalized therapy, alongside formidable challenges. To guide future development, we propose 10 significant prospects spanning clinical, research, engineering, materials, social, and economic domains, envisioning a future era of artificial intelligence in the surgical treatment of PCa.

Influence of public hospital reform on public health: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China.

Public health is an important symbol of national wealth and prosperity. At present, China's public health is hindered by the poor management of public hospitals, which impacts the demographic structure and socioeconomic development. Therefore, taking the implementation of public hospital reform in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employed the time-varying DID model and the mediating effect to evaluate the influence of public hospital reform on public health. The results were as follows: (1) Public hospital reform can significantly improve public health, and a series of robustness tests have also confirmed the effects; (2) Government's financial support is a transmission mechanism for public hospital reform to promote public health; (3) After taking control variables into consideration, the effect of public hospital reform is stronger in the western region with a poorer economy. This research provides a vital policy reference for promoting the scope of reform and improving the health of the general public.

Can environmental tax improve the environmental investment? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China.

The implementation of the Environmental Tax Law is a milestone in promoting China's green tax reform. However, the existence literature has lacked attention to whether it leads enterprises to invest in green environmental protection. To examine the Environmental Tax Law effects and mechanism on the environmental investment of heavy-polluted enterprises, this study used the data of heavy-polluted enterprises listed on the A-share market from 2012 to 2020 and regarded the Environmental Tax Law as a quasi-natural experiment to employ a difference-in-differences model. We found that environmental tax improves the green environmental investment of heavy-polluted enterprises, reflecting the guiding role of policy on enterprise investment allocation. Heterogeneity was found, and the promotion effect of environmental tax reform on enterprise environmental investment is more significant in non-nation-owned, central-western regions, and small-scale enterprises. Further analysis believed that market competition, as an external mechanism, helps strengthen environmental tax reform's implementation effect. The findings of this paper provide a new proof for a comprehensive understanding of the micro-effect of environmental tax reform and provide a reference for the implementation of green development strategies.