Data mining to understand health status preceding traumatic brain injury

The use of precision medicine is poised to increase in complex injuries such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), whose multifaceted comorbidities and personal circumstances create significant challenges in the domains of surveillance, management, and environmental mapping. Population-wide health administrative data remains a rather unexplored, but accessible data source for identifying clinical associations and environmental patterns that could lead to a better understanding of TBIs. However, the amount of data structured and coded by the International Classification of Disease poses a challenge to its successful interpretation. The emerging field of data mining can be instrumental in helping to meet the daunting challenges faced by the TBI community. The report outlines novel areas for data mining relevant to TBI, and offers insight into how the above approach can be applied to solve pressing healthcare problems. Future work should focus on confirmatory analyses, which subsequently can guide precision medicine and preventive frameworks.