Using data mining techniques to predict hospitalization of hemodialysis patients

Hemodialysis patients might suffer from unhealthy care behaviors or long-term dialysis treatments and need to be hospitalized. If the hospitalization rate of a hemodialysis center is high, its service quality will be low. Therefore, decreasing hospitalization rate is a crucial problem for health care centers. This study combines temporal abstraction with data mining techniques for analyzing dialysis patients' biochemical data to develop a decision support system. The mined temporal patterns are helpful for clinicians to predict hospitalization of hemodialysis patients and to suggest immediate treatments to avoid hospitalization. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.