The Power of Social Network Construction and Analysis for Knowledge Discovery in the Medical Referral Process

Abstract

The social network model is powerful enough to provide for the analysis and study of a variety of application domains from daily life, including health care and health informatics. After the widespread appearance of automated tools capable of deriving and analyzing social networks, social network analysis (SNA) and mining in the health care domain has recently received considerable attention for its key role in understanding how various bodies within the health care system form communities and how they are socially connected with each other. This understanding helps enhance the organizational structures and process flows, among others. In this article, we show how SNA techniques can solve issues in the medical referral system in the Canadian health care system and the like, by analyzing the social network of general practitioners (GPs) and specialists (SPs). One of the main targets is to optimize the communication between GPs and SPs with hopes of decreasing the waiting time of patients to be seen by SPs. Various SNA and mining techniques are described and analyzed, backed by reporting some experimental results.

Keywords:

• social network analysis
• medical referral system
• communities
• healthcare
• health informatics

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wadhah Almansoori

Wadhah Almansoori received a B.Sc. in Management Information Systems from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary. He is currently senior strategist at Alberta Health Services. His is interested in the applications of data mining, machine learning, and social network analysis in the health care domain.

Omar Addam

Omar Addam received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from Global University (Lebanon) in 2012 and is currently an M.Sc. student in Computer Science at the University of Calgary. He is interested in the applications of data mining, machine learning, and social network analysis in health care and FOREX. He is a member of the SANO team, which ranked first in Canada and received the KFC Innovations Award in the Microsoft Imagine Cup Finals in Russia in July 2013.

Omar Zarour

Omar Zarour is currently an M.Sc. student in Computer Science at the University of Calgary. He received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Alnajah University (Palestine), and spent a year as a visiting student at Bilkent University in Turkey. He is interested in the applications of data mining, machine learning, and social network analysis in healthcare and charity. Mr. Zarour is a member of the SANO team, which ranked first in Canada and received KFC Innovations Award in the Microsoft Imagine Cup Finals in Russia in July 2013.

Mohamad Elzohbi

Mohamad Elzohbi received his B.Sc. in Communications Engineering from Beirut Arab University (Lebanon) in 2012. He is currently an M.Sc. student in Computer Science at University of Calgary. He is interested in the applications of data mining, machine learning, and social network analysis in health care, communication networks, and homeland security. He is a CISCO-certified engineer.

Abdullah Sarhan

Abdullah Sarhan is presently an M.Sc. student in Computer Science at the University of Calgary. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Global University (Lebanon). He is interested in applications of data mining, machine learning, and social network analysis in health care and bioinformatics. He has industrial experience as a mobile applications developer and a data analyst.

Mehmet Kaya

Mehmet Kaya is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Firat University. He obtained M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from Firat University, and received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the same university. Dr. Kaya spent one year (2002) as a visiting scholar at the ADSA Lab in the Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary. His primary work and research interests are in the areas of data mining, multi-agent systems, social networks, bioinformatics and heath informatics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and soft computing. Professor Kaya has published more than 70 papers in refereed international conference proceedings and journals, including Expert Systems with Applications, Artificial Intelligence, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, and Applied Intelligence.

Jon Rokne

Jon Rokne is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary, where he chaired the department from 1989 to 1996. He earned an M.Sc. from the University of Alberta and a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary, both in the area of applied mathematics, with a numerical analysis emphasis. He has published extensively in mathematics, including three jointly authored books that belong to the classical literature in their areas. His main applied mathematics interests have been interval analysis and global optimization. He has served on the editorial boards of Reliable Computing and other mathematical periodicals. Dr. Rokne is a co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. In computer science, his research focus has been computer graphics, and physically and biologically based computer simulations. Several of his students have professorial and chair positions. Professor Rokne has had lengthy research visits to Germany, France, and New Zealand.

Reda Alhajj

Reda Alhajj is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary and is also affiliated with the Global University in Beirut, Lebanon. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering and Information Sciences at Bilkent University in Ankara, and earned a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the Middle East Technical University. Dr. Alhajj has published more than 375 papers in international journals and fully refereed conferences. He leads a very productive research group of Ph.D. and M.Sc. students working primarily in the areas of biocomputing and biodata analysis, data mining, multi-agent systems, schema integration and re-engineering, social network analysis, and XML. Dr. Alhajj is the Editor-in-Chief of the Social Network Analysis and Mining journal and Lecture Notes on Social Networks, and is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics—Part C. As a recipient of the University of Calgary’s Outstanding Achievements in Supervision Award, Professor Alhaji frequently gives invited talks in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.