Data Mining Applications in Healthcare Theory vs Practice

The paper interrogates the commonly accepted belief that data mining is widely used in medicine [8] by comparing academic advances with practical achievements in the field. The paper discusses practical usage and potential gains of data mining in healthcare facilities along with the growing number of publications indicating increasing interest to the topic in the scientific society. In order to evaluate the practical use of data mining in healthcare, a survey of tertiary hospitals in 5 countries has been conducted. The countries from diverse economic development regions were selected to cover 7 tertiary hospitals with unlike economic potential. Quantitative analysis of publications in the area of data mining applications in healthcare was made in the period of the last 8 years.