The book details novel techniques for acquiring, handling, retrieving, and making best use of healthcare data. It analyzes recent developments in healthcare computing and discusses emerging technologies that can help improve the health and well-being of patients.

Written by prominent researchers and experts working in the healthcare domain, the book sheds light on many of the computational challenges in the field of medical informatics. Each chapter in the book is structured as a "survey-style" article discussing the prominent research issues and the advances made on that research topic. The book is divided into three major categories:

Healthcare Data Sources and Basic Analytics - details the various healthcare data sources and analytical techniques used in the processing and analysis of such data
Advanced Data Analytics for Healthcare - covers advanced analytical methods, including clinical prediction models, temporal pattern mining methods, and visual analytics
Applications and Practical Systems for Healthcare - covers the applications of data analytics to pervasive healthcare, fraud detection, and drug discovery along with systems for medical imaging and decision support
Computer scientists are usually not trained in domain-specific medical concepts, whereas medical practitioners and researchers have limited exposure to the data analytics area. The contents of this book will help to bring together these diverse communities by carefully and comprehensively discussing the most relevant contributions from each domain