Copenhagen. The team from the AI-DPA research group at Mainz University of Applied Sciences and the University of Koblenz received the Best Paper Award for their case study at the International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM 2024) in Copenhagen. Doctoral candidates Jana Vormann, Jonas Blatt, and Flavio Horbach presented a case study on the process-oriented analysis of treatment pathways for prostate cancer in the Danish capital on October 14, 2024. The study, which was conducted in collaboration between Mainz University of Applied Sciences, the University of Koblenz, and the Institute for Digital Health Data Rhineland-Palatinate, examines the data of 22,337 prostate cancer patients from 2016 to 2024 in a data protection-compliant and anonymized manner. Over 140,000 data sets were processed and condensed into more than 12,000 disease progressions.
“Our study shows that prostate cancer data can generally be processed using process mining and therefore represents an important first step for promising future research, for example on progression predictions and recommendations,” explains Jana Vormann.
As part of the PODS4H workshop (Process-Oriented Data Science for Healthcare), the team presented its case study, which dealt with the explorative analysis of treatment courses for prostate cancer. The results of the study offer initial insights into the complexity of treatment processes and open up new possibilities for research and analysis of cancer data using process analysis. The insights gained offer potential for future research, including in the doctoral program. The Best Paper Award for the case study in the workshop is a recognition of the team’s outstanding work and the importance of their research for the future processing and analysis of health data.
“The study is a great example of how the use of innovative methods of data analysis from the data collected in the cancer registry can provide new insights into oncological care and improve patient care,” says Dr. Nils Herm-Stapelberg, Head of Data Science at the Institute for Digital Health Data.
Prof. Dr. Sven Pagel, spokesperson of the research group, emphasizes: “We are delighted that the long-standing collaboration between Mainz University of Applied Sciences and the Institute for Digital Health Data (IDG) is now bearing fruit for further research right at the start of the AI-DPA doctoral research group project.”
With these promising results, the team is paving the way for further innovative research in the field of cancer data analysis and process analysis. This underlines the relevance of data-driven processes for health research. The successful collaboration between Mainz University of Applied Sciences, the University of Koblenz, and the Institute for Digital Health Data can now move on to the next steps.
