Electronic health record (EHR) systems have been adopted to capture the condition of patients, facilitate communication between healthcare providers [1,2], and improve the quality of care [3]. While certain aspects of patient care are documented by structured data (e.g., diagnosis codes [4]) or semi-structured [5] text (e.g., problem lists [6]), a significant portion of documentation is captured only in the clinical narrative [7]. The narrative in the medical record has proven to be a great enabler of flexibility in clinical workflow [8] and decision support [9]. (Source: International Journal of Medical Informatics).