In 2018, NIOSH, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) contracted the National Academies of Science (NAS) to conduct a consensus study on improving the cost-effectiveness and coordination of occupational safety and health (OSH) surveillance systems. NAS’s report recommended that the federal government use recent advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the processing of data in OSH surveillance systems. The main source of OSH information on fatal and non-fatal workplace incidents comes from the unstructured free-text “injury narratives” recorded in surveillance systems. For example, an employer may report an
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