JHIM: Data mining is essential to healthcare
“Data mining applications can greatly benefit all parties involved in the healthcare industry,” according to an article published in the February issue of the Journal of Healthcare Information Management.
“Data mining has been used intensively and extensively by many organizations. In healthcare, data mining is becoming increasingly popular, if not increasingly essential,” said authors Hian Chye Koh, associate professor and vice-dean at the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Gerald Tan, manager of products and services at SPSS Singapore.
“The huge amounts of data generated by healthcare transactions are too complex and voluminous to be processed and analyzed by traditional methods,” the authors wrote. “Data mining provides the methodology and technology to transform these mounds of data into useful information for decision making.”
In healthcare, data mining is being used to evaluate treatment effectiveness, manage healthcare, manage customer relationships and detect fraud and abuse. However, limitations in data accessibility exist “because the raw inputs for data mining often exist in different settings and systems, such as administration, clinics, laboratories and more. Hence, the data have to be collected and integrated before data mining can be done.”
One solution is a data warehouse but building one can be costly and time-consuming. According to the authors, other problems include:
“Data mining applications in healthcare can have tremendous potential and usefulness,” wrote the authors. In the future, they wrote that possible directions include “the standardization of clinical vocabulary and the sharing of data across organizations to enhance the benefits of healthcare data mining applications,” as well as “the use of text mining to expand the scope and nature of what healthcare data mining can currently do.”
“Data mining has been used intensively and extensively by many organizations. In healthcare, data mining is becoming increasingly popular, if not increasingly essential,” said authors Hian Chye Koh, associate professor and vice-dean at the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Gerald Tan, manager of products and services at SPSS Singapore.
“The huge amounts of data generated by healthcare transactions are too complex and voluminous to be processed and analyzed by traditional methods,” the authors wrote. “Data mining provides the methodology and technology to transform these mounds of data into useful information for decision making.”
In healthcare, data mining is being used to evaluate treatment effectiveness, manage healthcare, manage customer relationships and detect fraud and abuse. However, limitations in data accessibility exist “because the raw inputs for data mining often exist in different settings and systems, such as administration, clinics, laboratories and more. Hence, the data have to be collected and integrated before data mining can be done.”
One solution is a data warehouse but building one can be costly and time-consuming. According to the authors, other problems include:
- Missing, corrupted, inconsistent or non-standardized data;
- Patterns that are a product of random fluctuations;
- Lack of knowledge of the domain area as well as data mining methodology and tools; and
- Lack of time, effort and money.
“Data mining applications in healthcare can have tremendous potential and usefulness,” wrote the authors. In the future, they wrote that possible directions include “the standardization of clinical vocabulary and the sharing of data across organizations to enhance the benefits of healthcare data mining applications,” as well as “the use of text mining to expand the scope and nature of what healthcare data mining can currently do.”
Beth Walsh,
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.