DETECH: DEfinition and Term Extraction CHallenge
DETECH 2026 will be a hybrid event
We are happy to announce that DETECH 2026 is a co-located event at MDTT 2026!
The DEfinition and Term Extraction CHallenge (DETECH) focuses on the automatic extraction of domain-specific terms and the generation of natural language definitions for medical concepts.
DETECH aims to advance research on explainable, data-driven medical terminology by combining term extraction and definition generation into a unified challenge.
Organized within the HEREDITARY project, DETECH inaugurates a new evaluation challenge dedicated to the intersection of terminology, NLP, and biomedical text analysis. It will take place as a satellite event of Multilingual Digital Terminology Today (MDTT) 2026, scheduled for June 24, 2026.
The DETECH 2026 edition explores the gut–brain interplay, a domain at the crossroads of gastroenterology, neuroscience, and genetics. It provides a realistic testbed for evaluating automatic methods that identify and define specialized concepts in complex medical communication.
The challenge is organized around the following tasks:
The provisional agenda of the challenge is the following:
We welcome participation from academic, research, and industry teams working in NLP, terminology, lexicography, or biomedical informatics.
In particular:
Each run will be evaluated according to the following measures:
Participants must submit a technical report describing their approach, experiments, and results.
Reports must be in the CEUR-ART single-column style.
Templates:
Reports will undergo a peer review and accepted papers will be published on the online open-access platform CEUR-WS. Proceedings published with CEUR-WS are indexed in Scopus.
It is mandatory that at least one author of each accepted paper registers for the challenge to present the work and have the paper published in the proceedings.
Authors of the accepted contributions to the conference will be invited to submit an extended version of the paper for a journal or a volume. More information will be announced during the conference.
Federica Vezzani - Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio - Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Vanessa Bonato - Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
Gianmaria Silvello - Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
The DETECH 2026 challenge is co-located with the 5th International Conference on "Multilingual digital terminology today. Design, representation formats and management systems" MDTT 2026 which will be hosted at University of Zadar, Croatia
Address: Obala kralja Petra Krešimira IV, 2
Arriving by Plane: From Zadar Airport, you can either take a taxi directly to the university or use the shuttle bus service to Zadar’s main bus station and continue on foot from there. For details on the airport shuttle, visit Zadar Airport Transport.
Arriving by Bus: If you arrive at Zadar’s main bus station, it’s approximately a 20-minute walk to the university building. Information on local bus services is available here: Zadar Bus Station.
From Zagreb Airport: You can take a shuttle bus from the airport to Zagreb’s main bus station, where buses to Zadar depart every 3-4 hours. The journey takes around 3.5 hours. For more details on bus schedules in Zagreb, visit the following link: Autobusni kolodvor Zagreb – najjeftinije online karte za autobus (akz.hr).
From Split Airport: Take bus no. 37 from the airport to Trogir, and then continue your journey to Zadar by bus. The trip takes approximately 3 hours and provides scenic views of the Adriatic coast.
Zadar is a popular tourist destination with a variety of accommodation options available, ranging from hotels to private rentals. For more information on accommodation, dining, and sightseeing, please visit the Zadar Tourist Board website.
Discounted prices for DETECH/MDTT 2026 participants are available in Amare Hotel (contact: petra@hotelamare.com).
Other options we can recommend are:
