ArXiv

Schema-Guided Hierarchical Information Extraction and Semantic Evaluation Using Generative AI

Authors
Modhurita Mitra, Jan-Willem Versteeg, Maarten D. Schermer...
Categories
cs.AI, cs.CL
arXiv
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06167v1
PDF
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.06167v1

Brief

A schema-based framework uses generative AI to extract hierarchical, variable-cardinality information from unstructured documents in a single zero-shot call, then semantically evaluates extractions against a gold standard via a path-based matching algorithm and a rubric (exact/semantic/useful/non-match). On NICE HTA documents it recovered 12/14 attributes with F1 >90% and ran ~30× faster than human experts; authors report cross-model and cross-organisation generalisability.

Why it matters

Extracted 12 of 14 attributes from NICE health-technology-assessment (HTA) documents with F1 > 90% using Claude Opus 3 in a single zero-shot model call.

Key details

  • Introduced a schema-driven pipeline plus a path-based semantic matching algorithm and a rubric (exact / semantic / useful / non-match) that compares extracted values to a gold standard via generative-AI; extraction was ~30× faster than a human expert.
  • Framework showed generalisability across different generative models and transferability across other HTA organisations and languages.
Source evidence

Abstract

We present a schema-based framework for extracting complex, structured information from unstructured text documents using generative AI, followed by automated semantic evaluation of the extracted information against a gold standard. The schema, serving as an information model encoding domain knowledge, provides a unified, systematic, and consistent framework for extraction of hierarchical, nested information, with attributes of variable cardinality, and subsequent evaluation of the results. Information extraction from a document is performed in a single call to the model, in zero-shot mode. In the evaluation step, we introduce a path-based semantic matching algorithm to align the nested, variable-cardinality attributes in the extracted results with those in the gold standard. We use generative AI for semantic comparison of the extracted and gold standard values of an attribute, and introduce a rubric to classify the result of the comparison, according to domain-specific considerations, as an exact, semantic, useful, or non-match. We were able to extract 12 out of 14 attributes with an F1 score of $>$90\% from documents published by the health technology assessment organisation NICE, using the generative AI model Claude Opus 3. The time needed to extract the attributes from a document was $\sim$30 times lower than the time taken by a human domain expert. We further demonstrate generalisability of this framework across different generative AI models and transferability across different HTA organisations and languages.

Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. To be published in Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE 22nd International Conference on e-Science (e-Science), Naples, Italy