Medicines Question Answering System, MeQA
This system addresses the need for automated medical advice in Spanish, particularly for patients using online services, though it is incremental as it applies existing QA methods to a new language and domain.
The paper introduces MeQA, the first Spanish-language system for answering questions about human medicines, aiming to reduce the workload on medical consultation websites by providing automated responses based on medicine leaflets.
In this paper we present the first system in Spanish capable of answering questions about medicines for human use, called MeQA (Medicines Question Answering), a project created by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS, for its acronym in Spanish). Online services that offer medical help have proliferated considerably, mainly due to the current pandemic situation due to COVID-19. For example, websites such as Doctoralia, Savia, or SaludOnNet, offer Doctor Answers type consultations, in which patients or users can send questions to doctors and specialists, and receive an answer in less than 24 hours. Many of the questions received are related to medicines for human use, and most can be answered through the leaflets. Therefore, a system such as MeQA capable of answering these types of questions automatically could alleviate the burden on these websites, and it would be of great use to such patients.