Discovering Sequential Patterns in a UK General Practice Database

Otitis externa in UK general practice: a survey using the UK General Practice Research Database.

BACKGROUND Otitis externa is a common clinical problem in general practice and yet there are remarkably few data available on the demographic characteristics of patients with this condition and the approaches used by general practitioners (GPs) in the United Kingdom (UK) to manage it. AIM To define the descriptive epidemiology of otitis externa in the general population, to describe the first...

Work patterns in UK general practice: turning the clock back?

have traded a bit of autonomy for the greater good when clinical freedom is now so difficult to defend; or that general practice mainly provides Monday to Friday daytime care in the NHS and many other healthcare systems. The research on the dangers of stress and poor morale has convinced doctors, and more importantly their negotiators, that quality of life needs to be taken more seriously. What...

Discovering and Processing Sequential Patterns in Databases

Sequential patterns analysis in a student database

This paper presents a data mining methodology to analyze the careers of students, where a career can be seen as a sequence of exams. The model is built using sequential pattern analysis and uses the algorithm SPAM. We consider an ideal career corresponding to a student which has taken each examination just after the end of the corresponding course, without delays. The frequent patterns identifi...

Discovering Periodic Patterns in Database Audit Trails

Information about periodic processing of database operations has a pivotal importance for continuous physical database design and automated performance tuning of database systems. This work shows how to detect the oscillations of database workloads caused by the periodical invocations of user applications. In particular, we present an algorithm for discovering the periodic patterns in processin...