Process mining
Hospital Operations & Design
Definition. Process mining is a family of data-driven techniques that discover, check and improve the processes actually executed in an organisation by analysing time-stamped event logs recorded in its information systems.
Explanation
Every event in a log must carry at least a case identifier, an activity name and a timestamp. From such logs, process mining performs three core tasks: discovery of the real process model without a predefined design, conformance checking of observed behaviour against a reference model such as a guideline or clinical pathway, and enhancement of the model with time, resource and outcome information (van der Aalst, 2012). Unlike classic data mining, it preserves the order of events and their links over time, which is why it is suited to questions about delay, rework and deviation in patient journeys.
A review of 74 healthcare case studies showed that the method is used mainly for clinical and administrative processes, with recurring challenges in data extraction, event-log quality and the high variability of care processes (Rojas et al., 2016). In hospital management it is increasingly used to locate bottlenecks and to test pathway conformance in oncology, where diagnosis-to-treatment intervals and radiotherapy workflows are typical targets (Process Mining 101 for Oncology Hospitals). Not every deviation from a reference model is an error, because clinical heterogeneity produces legitimate variants.
Related concepts
Patient flow Bottleneck Clinical pathway Health information system
Read on The Health Topics
- Process Mining 101 for Oncology Hospitals: Seeing and Managing Real Patient Flow
- Process Mining in Healthcare: Characteristics and Challenges
- The Capacity Problem in Oncology and How to Solve It
- Bottleneck Management 101: An Interdisciplinary Introduction with a Focus on Healthcare
References
Rojas, E., Munoz-Gama, J., Sepúlveda, M., & Capurro, D. (2016). Process mining in healthcare: A literature review. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 61, 224–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2016.04.007
van der Aalst, W. (2012). Process mining. Communications of the ACM, 55(8), 76–83. https://doi.org/10.1145/2240236.2240257
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Process mining. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/process-mining/