Applying cluster analysis to build a patient-centric healthcare service strategy for elderly patients

Cluster analysis can be viewed as a cornerstone for customer-centred services since it contributes to classification and segmentation of customers. The proposed six-step approach is based on a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) perspective and hence enables both patient segmentation by cluster analysis and development of customised services. The six steps are selection, preprocessing, transformation, data mining, evaluation and integration. Therefore, the proposed approach is a procedure to support knowledge management for strategic decision making. In the empirical study, we show how to deploy the proposed approach to build a customised service strategy for elderly patients. This procedure can also be applied to other data sets.

Keywords: healthcare services, elderly patients, cluster analysis, data mining, customer relationship management, CRM, knowledge management, patient segmentation, customised services, geriatric services