Use Cases for Unstructured Data

Introduction

Experts estimate that 85% of all data exists in unstructured formats – held in e-mails, documents (contracts, memos, clinical notes, legal briefs), social media feeds, etc. Where structured data typically accounts for quantitative facts, the more interesting and potentially more valuable expert opinions and conclusions are often hidden in these unstructured formats. And with massive volumes of text being generated at unprecedented speed, there’s very little chance this information can be made useful without some process of synthesis or automation.

Automating text analysis is not easy. Too often, it requires prior knowledge of what the text is about and a great deal of upfront work to build relevant dictionaries or ontologies. The exception is InterSystems iKnow technology, which employs a unique “bottom-up” approach that analyzes text based solely on what is contained in the text itself.

This paper outlines four basic use cases for the kinds of insights that can be gained from text analysis. For each use case, we briefly describe how real InterSystems customers have leveraged iKnow technology to enhance their applications with text analysis.