Health Monitoring Techniques Using Scan Statistics

Scan statistics appeared in the statistics literature about half a century ago, and since then many papers suggesting either extensions and modifications or applications into various research fields have been published. Scan statistics are mainly used to detect clusters of events in time or space. In the last two decades several researchers have proposed techniques or systems for the surveillance of public health or other healthcare processes. In this paper, we shall present a systematic review of health monitoring techniques which exploit scan statistics in order to set up early warning systems detecting potential threats for public health.