The healthcare industry impacts all of us, through its interactions with ourselves, our loved ones, our family, and our friends. The high costs associated with the healthcare industry are intertwined with the physical, emotional, and spiritual trauma that occurs when someone close to us becomes ill or feels pain.

In the United States, the healthcare system is in a fragile state, as healthcare expenditure exceeds 15% of the nation's total GDP; this proportion far exceeds that of other developed countries, and is expected to rise to at least 20% by the year 2040 (Braunstein, 2014; Bernaert, 2015). The rise in healthcare costs in the US, and internationally, can be attributed to several factors. One is a shift in demographics to a more elderly population. Average life expectancy (LE) rose to in excess of 80 years of age for the first time in 2011...

The clinical data collection process starts when a patient starts telling a physician about his or her condition. This is known as the patient history, and since it is not observed directly by the physician, but instead recounted by the patient, the patient’s story is known as subjective information. In contrast, objective information comes from the physician and consists of the physician's own observations about the patient, from the physical examination, lab tests, and imaging studies, to other diagnostic procedures. Together, the subjective and objective information makes up the clinical note.

There are several types of clinical notes used in healthcare. The history and physical (H&P) is the most thorough and comprehensive clinical note. It is usually obtained when an outpatient physician sees a patient...

Being philosophical for a moment, every known object that has a significant importance attributed to it has a name. The organs you are using to read these words are known as eyes. The words are written on pieces of paper called pages. To turn the pages, you use your hands. These are all objects that we have named so that we can identify them easily.

In healthcare, important entities—diseases, procedures, lab tests, drugs, symptoms, bacteria species, for example, have names and identities too. For example, the failure of the heart valves to pump blood to the rest of the body is known as heart failure. ACE inhibitors are a class of drugs used to treat heart failure.

A problem arises, however, when healthcare industry workers associate the same entity with different identities. For example, one physician may refer to "heart failure&quot...

So you've decided to enter the world of analytics, and you know you want to focus on the healthcare industry. However, that barely narrows down the problem space, as there are hundreds of open problems in healthcare that are being addressed with machine learning and other analytical tools. If you have ever typed the words "machine learning in healthcare" into Google or PubMed, you have probably discovered how vast the ocean of machine learning use cases in healthcare is. In academia, publications focus on problems ranging from predicting dementia onset in the elderly to predicting the occurrence of a heart attack within six months to predicting which antidepressants patients will best respond to. How do you pick the problem on which to focus? This section is all about answering that question. Choosing the appropriate problem to...

In Chapter 1, Introduction to Healthcare Analytics, we introduced the Healthcare Analytics triumvirate of healthcare, mathematics, and computer science. In this chapter, we have looked at some foundational healthcare topics. In Chapter 3, Machine Learning Foundations, we will look at some of the mathematical and machine learning concepts that underlie healthcare analytics.

Bernaert, Arnaud (2015). "Five Global Health Trends You Can't Ignore." UPS Longitudes. April 13, 2015. longitudes.ups.com/five-global-health-trends-you-cant-ignore/.

Braunstein, Mark (2014). Contemporary Health Informatics. Chicago, IL: AHIMA Press.

Esfandiari N, Babavalian MR, Moghadam A-ME, Tabar VK (2014) Knowledge discovery in medicine: current issue and future trend. Expert Syst Appl 41(9): 4434–4463.

Martin, GJ (2005). "Screening and Prevention of Disease." In Kasper DL, Braunwald E, Fauci AS, Hauser SL, Longo DL, Jameson JL. eds. Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 16e. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

OECD (2013), Health at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/health_glance-2013-en.

Smith, Robert C (1996). The Patient's Story. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

US Department...