Data mining
is another concept closely associated with large databases such as clinical data repositories and data warehouses.
However, data mining (like several other IT concepts) means different things to different people.
Health care application vendors may use the term data mining when referring to the user interface of the data warehouse or data repository.
They may refer to the ability to drill down into data as data mining, for example.
However, more precisely used, data mining refers to a sophisticated analysis tool that automatically discovers patterns among data in a data store.
Data mining is an advanced form of decision support.
Unlike passive query tools, the data mining analysis tool does not require the user to pose individual specific questions to the database.
Instead, this tool is programmed to look for and extract patterns, trends, and rules.
True data mining is currently used in the business community for marketing and predictive analysis (Stair & Reynolds, 2003).
This analytical data mining is, however, not currently widespread in the health care community.