6533b7dcfe1ef96bd1271aee

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Identification of patterns og change on mongitudinal data, illustrated by two exemples : study of hospital pathways in the management of cancer. Constuction of quality of life change patterns in a clinical trial for advanced cancer

subject

description

Context In healthcare domain, data mining for knowledge discovery represent a growing issue. Questions about the organisation of healthcare system and the study of the relation between treatment and quality of life (QoL) perceived could be addressed that way. The evolution of technologies provides us with efficient data mining tools and statistical packages containing advanced methods available for non-experts. We illustrate this approach through two issues: 1 / What organisation of healthcare system for cancer diseases management? 2 / Exploring in patients suffering from metastatic cancer, the relationship between health-related QoL perceived and treatment received as part of a clinical trial. Materials and methods Today we have large databases. Some are dedicated to gather together all hospital stays, as is the case for the national medico-administrative DRG-type database. Others are used to store information about QoL perceived by patients, routinely collected in clinical trials. The analysis of these data was carried out following three main steps: In the first step, data are prepared to be useable according to a defined concept of data analysis. For example, a classical database (patient-centered) was converted to a new database organised around a new defined entity which was different from the patient (eg. Care trajectory). Then in the second step, we applied data mining methods for knowledge discovery: we used the formal analysis of concepts method and unsupervised clustering techniques. And finally the results were presented in a graphical form. Results Concerning the question of the organisation of healthcare system, we constructed a typology of hospital care trajectories. We were able then to describe current practice in the management of cancers from the first cancer related surgical operation until one year of follow-up. In the case of breast cancer, we’ve described a typology of care on the basis of hospital costs over a one year follow up. Concerning the second question, we have also constructed a typology of QoL change patterns. This comprised three groups: Improvement, stability and degradation group.Conclusion The main interest of this work was to highlight new thoughts, which advances understanding and, contributing in appropriate solutions building.