An Empirical Study for Senior Citizens Using a Customized Medical Informatics System for Dementia Diagnosis and Analysis

Abstract

The treatment of dementia-related diseases is a global issue. Taiwan is facing a more serious dementia problem due to the combination of an aging society and a declining birthrate. A great portion of healthcare resources has been utilized for dementia among the aged population. In order to understand how dementia develops in rural areas in Taiwan, a cooperated effort between the university and a regional hospital was formed to develop a customized medical information system to collect and track dementia patients. This efficient customized system compiled information on 768 patients with dementia-released diseases. Big data technology and data mining approaches were then applied to analyze the relevant information. Using statistical analysis, we then extracted useful medical findings from the large amounts of collected medical data. Some of the findings indicate that the patients’ education level and care practices have a major effect on the dementia severity in these local senior populations.