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The Limits of Generalization: Zero-Shot French Medical NER Using French, English and Multilingual GLiNER Models

Published inStudies in health technology and informatics, vol. 336, p. 859-863
Publication date2026-05-21
Abstract

This study evaluates zero-shot Named Entity Recognition (NER) using several GLiNER-based models on French medical text. Eight open datasets covering diseases, symptoms, and drugs are used to assess generalization across varied formats and domains. Models are evaluated using entity-level F1-scores based on MUC-5 metrics, with prompts formulated using English, French and bilingual labels to assess cross-lingual robustness. Results show that OpenMed models, explicitly trained for the involved medical entities, outperform general and domain-specialized GLiNER variants. However, performance varies by dataset and context, revealing challenges in transfer learning and generalizability. The findings underscore the importance of developing zero-shot NER models resilient to dataset biases and contexts.

Keywords
  • GLiNER
  • NLP
  • Named entity recognition
  • Zero-shot
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Multilingualism
  • Humans
  • France
  • Language
  • Data Mining / methods
Citation (ISO format)
ZAGHIR, Jamil et al. The Limits of Generalization: Zero-Shot French Medical NER Using French, English and Multilingual GLiNER Models. In: Studies in health technology and informatics, 2026, vol. 336, p. 859–863. doi: 10.3233/SHTI260301
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Additional URL for this publicationhttps://ebooks.iospress.nl/doi/10.3233/SHTI260301
Journal ISSN0926-9630
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Technical informations

Creation01/06/2026 08:48:16
First validation01/07/2026 09:37:55
Update01/07/2026 09:37:55
Status update01/07/2026 09:37:55
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