Formal Concept Analysis Grounded Knowledge Discovery in Electronic Health Record Systems

Abstract

Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a prominent research field having its roots in applied mathematics. Based on a mathematization of concepts and their hierarchies, FCA and its varieties have the potential to unify knowledge discovery methodologies. This paper is devoted to a summary of FCA applications in mining relevant conceptual landscapes from medical data. Electronic Health Records (EHR) constitute a significant technological advance in the way medical information is stored, communicated and processed. Digitized information systems are employed with the aim to improve efficiency, quality of care and costs. We are interested in combining different analysis techniques and visualization methods, such as analogical reasoning, FCA and graph databases in order to bring a fresh perspective over the medical process and to improve the task of knowledge discovery in EHR systems.