Lending a hand: could machine learning help hospital staff make better use of patient feedback?

In this issue of BMJ Quality and Safety, two articles consider how patients' opinions of care can be collected, analysed and used to inform healthcare delivery. In the first of the two studies, Lee and colleagues examine how written patient experience comments feedback is used in the National Health Service (NHS).1 Uniquely, the authors focus their investigation on the way in which Boards of Directors use patient experience information to monitor and improve care.

The second study, conducted by Griffiths and Leaver, illustrates how computational tools could automate the collection and analysis of patient experience data. The authors' system scrapes comments from social media websites and machine learning algorithms convert this unstructured information (ie, free text comments) into a zero-to-five 'star' rating, which they suggest could help prioritise hospital inspections.2

Lee and colleagues focused their investigation on two NHS Foundation Trusts with experience in collecting patient feedback...

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