Llettuce: LLM for Efficient Translation and Transformation into Uniform Clinical Encoding

Llettuce is an application for medical researchers that matches the informal medicine names supplied by the user to concepts in the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OMOP) standardised vocabularies

The application can be used as an API, or run with a graphical user interface (GUI).

This project is under active development

Overview

The project uses a Large Language Model to suggest formal drug names to match the informal name supplied by the user. Suggested formal drug names are then fed into parameterised SQL queries against the OMOP database to fetch the relevant concepts. Any returned concepts are then ranked by how well they match the supplied query and provided to the user.

This is the rough process that the Llettuce API follows. Subject to change

flowchart TD
    usr[User]
    api_in(API)
    api_out(API)
    llm(Large Language Model)
    strpr[[String pre-processing]]
    omop[(OMOP database)]
    fuzz[[Fuzzy matching]]
    usr -- User sends an informal name to the API --> api_in
    api_out -- API responds with concept\ninformation as JSON --> usr
    api_in -- LLM sent informal name --> llm
    llm -- LLM responds with possible formal name --> strpr
    strpr --> omop
    omop --> fuzz
    fuzz -- Matches meeting threshold --> api_out

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Installation

To use Llettuce, you must first clone the repository

$ git clone <url>
$ cd Carrot-Assistant

Then install the dependencies, either using pip

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

or conda

$ conda create -f environment.yml

There are two ways of interacting with Llettuce: either by using the graphical user interface, or through the command line. Both of these rely on starting a Llettuce server locally, then making requests to this server. The GUI is useful for people who want to interactively run a few examples and be presented with a visual representation of the relevant OMOP concepts. The command line can be used if a user is more interested in running Llettuce programmatically and retrieving a large number of concepts.

Connecting to a database

Llettuce works by querying a database with the OMOP schema, so you should have access to one. Your database access credentials should be kept in .env. An example of the format can be found in /Carrot-Assistant/.env.example

Running the API

The simplest way to get a formal name from an informal name is to use the API and the GUI. To start a Llettuce server:

$ python app.py

Or run the application using Docker

$ docker run -p 8000:8000 Lettuce

Then start another terminal, and start the GUI

$ streamlit run ui.py

The GUI makes calls to the API equivalent to the curl request below.

Run pipeline

To get a response without the GUI, a request can be made using curl, e.g. for Betnovate scalp application

$ curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:8000/run" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name": "Betnovate Scalp Application"}'

The API endpoint is /run, and uses a POST method

The request body should have the format

   {
    "name": <Drug informal name>,
    "pipeline_options": {
      <options>
    }
   }

Refer to app.py in the API reference for the available pipeline options.

The response will be provided in the format

   {
    "event": "llm_output",
    "data": {
       "reply": formal_name: str,
       "meta": LLM metadata: List,
     }
   }

   {
    "event": "omop_output",
    "data": [
       {
         "search_term": search_term: str,
         "CONCEPT": [concept_data: Dict]
       }
     ]
   }

The response will be streamed asynchronously so the llm_output will arrive before any omop_output

Contact

If there are any bugs, please email us