Specifics of Medical Data Mining for Diagnosis Aid:
A Survey
Sarah Itani
a,b,∗
, Fabian Lecron
c
, Philippe Fortemps
c
a
Fund for Scientific Research - FNRS (F.R.S.-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium
b
Faculty of Engineering, University of Mons, Department of Mathematics and Operations Research, Mons, Belgium
c
Faculty of Engineering, University of Mons, Department of Engineering Innovation Management, Mons, Belgium
Abstract
Data mining continues to play an important role in medicine; specifically, for the development
of diagnosis aid models used in expert and intelligent systems. Although we can find abundant
research on this topic, clinicians remain reluctant to use decision support tools. Social pressure
explains partly this lukewarm position, but concerns about reliability and credibility are also put
forward. To address this reticence, we emphasize the importance of the collaboration between both
data miners and clinicians. This survey lays the foundation for such an interaction, by focusing on
the specifics of diagnosis aid, and the related data modeling goals. On this regard, we propose an
overview on the requirements expected by the clinicians, who are both the experts and the final
users. Indeed, we believe that the interaction with clinicians should take place from the very first
steps of the process and throughout the development of the predictive models, thus not only at the
final validation stage. Actually, against a current research approach quite blindly driven by data,
we advocate the need for a new expert-aware approach. This survey paper provides guidelines to
contribute to the design of daily helpful diagnosis aid systems.
Keywords: Data Mining; Medicine; Diagnosis Aid; Explainable Artificial Intelligence
1. Introduction
As one of the trendiest research topics of our century, Data Mining (DM) makes key contribu-
tions to the scientific and technological advance in a considerable number of fields (Gupta, 2014;
PhridviRaj and GuruRao, 2014). Coined during the nineties, the discipline is subject to a tough
competition for the development of algorithms always more powerful, which aim at processing data
∗
Corresponding author. University of Mons, Department of Mathematics and Operations Research, Rue de
Houdain, 9, 7000 Mons, Belgium.