Reducing Medical Errors via Data Mining Techniques: A Structured Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

The connection between computer science and healthcare gradually consolidates as an area of research referred to as “medical informatics,” where clinical data is gathered, retrieved, processed, analysed, and applied in various healthcare settings. In this context, by means of a structured literature review, the objective of this paper is to examine what role data mining plays in strategic healthcare decision-making. In particular, it provides an overview of previous and recent research on using information extraction processes to enhance patient safety management and the overall patient journey. Documents collected from the Scopus database and published between 2005 and May 2023 are the focus of this research. Even though theoretical and experimental research has demonstrated a strong connection between the two researched issues (i.e., data mining and patient safety), the study is still considered an emerging field garnering a growing interest. The most recent findings shed light on the essential requirement to implement “patient centricity in health services” and to focus on the primary research topics, which are the reorganisation of human resources, the co-production of health services, and the optimisation of clinical pathways. This Structured Literature Review results have consequences, which may be interpreted as management proposals for the clinical governance of public and private healthcare organisations.