Process mining is a discipline sitting between data mining and process science, whose goal is to provide theoretical methods and software tools to analyse process execution data, known as event logs. Although process mining was originally conceived to facilitate business process management activities, research studies have shown the benefit of leveraging process mining tools in different contexts, including healthcare. However, applying process mining tools to analyse healthcare process execution data is not straightforward. In this paper, we report the analysis of an event log recording more than 30 million events capturing the general practice healthcare processes of more than one million patients in Victoria--Australia--over five years. Our analysis allowed us to understand benefits and limitations of the state-of-the-art process mining techniques when dealing with highly variable processes and large data-sets. While we provide solutions to the identified limitations, the overarching goal of this study was to detect differences between the patients` health services utilization pattern observed in 2020--during the COVID-19 pandemic and mandatory lock-downs --and the one observed in the prior four years, 2016 to 2019. By using a combination of process mining techniques and traditional data mining, we were able to demonstrate that vaccinations in Victoria did not drop drastically--as other interactions did. On the contrary, we observed a surge of influenza and pneumococcus vaccinations in 2020, contradicting research findings of similar studies conducted in different geographical areas.
翻译:开采过程是数据采矿和过程科学之间的学科,目的是提供理论方法和软件工具,以分析过程执行数据,称为事件记录。虽然最初设想进程采矿是为了便利业务流程管理活动,但研究显示在不同情况下利用过程采矿工具的好处,包括医疗保健;然而,运用过程采矿工具分析保健过程执行数据并非直截了当。在本文中,我们报告对记录了维多利亚-澳大利亚五年多期间100多万病人一般实践保健过程的事件记录的分析,我们的分析使我们得以了解在处理高度变异过程和大型数据集时,先进过程采矿技术的好处和局限性。虽然我们为查明的局限性提供了解决办法,但这项研究的总目标是发现2020年在CVID-19大流行期间观察到的病人`保健服务利用模式与强制禁闭 -- -- 以及过去4年(2016年至2019年)所观察到的事件之间的差异。我们利用过程采矿技术和传统数据采矿技术的结合,使我们能够了解先进过程采矿技术的效益和局限性。我们通过研究,在维多利亚-2020年不同地区开展的疫苗接种活动研究中,我们发现,没有发生类似的疫苗运动。