Mining administrative health databases for epidemiological purposes: A case study on acute myocardial infarctions diagnoses

Abstract

We present a pilot data mining analysis on the subset of the Public Health Database (PHD) of Lombardia Region concerning hospital discharge data relative to Acute Myocardial Infarctions without ST segment elevation (NON-STEMI). The analysis is carried out using nonlinear semi-parametric and parametric mixed effects models, in order to detect different patterns of growth in the number of NON-STEMI diagnoses within the 30 largest clinical structures of Lombardia Region, along the time period 2000–2007. The analysis is a seminal example of statistical support to decision makers in clinical context, aimed at monitoring the diffusion of new procedures and the effects of health policy interventions.