Combining unstructured clinical text with structured EHR tables through retrieval-augmented alignment produces significantly more accurate and complete patient timelines than using either source alone, with 35% of clinically important events appearing only in text.
This paper tackles a critical healthcare problem: reconstructing accurate timelines of patient events from messy clinical records. Clinical narratives (text) contain rich context but vague timing, while structured EHR tables have precise timestamps but miss many events.