Hi Everyone!

I would like to research machine learning, data mining, and how both can impact healthcare. I have been working in healthcare IT for the past seven years, starting out as an intern and working my way up to a Lead System Engineer. My role focuses on implementing, maintaining, and upgrading hospitals systems.

In recent years, I have seen more ways machine learning and data mining are being used to help transform healthcare. For example, most EHR companies offer a solution that monitors a patients symptoms and can alert if the patient is considered septic. I have also become familiar with a software used in a rehab facility that monitors a patients risk of being sent back to an acute care hospital. This software uses twenty markers on the patient to score their risk.
Some of the questions I have been thinking about while reading the text are as follows:

• How will machine learning change healthcare?
• Will it help with diagnosing patients or hinder?
• Will it take some of the human out of the equation? Is this good or bad?
• Who will be impacted and how?

An idea I had for an experimental study is introducing machine learning and data mining in one clinical setting but not another. The experiment would be to see the differences in diagnosing between the two facilities. The problem I found with this experiment is that both facilities would have different patients with different symptoms, making it hard to compare diagnosing differences between the two.
I look forward to getting to delve in and learn more about this topic.