11th International Scientific Conference Technics, Informatics and Education – TIE 2026, (pp. 216-222)
АУТОР(И) / AUTHOR(S): Nikola Stanić 
, Katarina Karić , Andrijana Gaborović and Jelena Plašić
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.46793/TIE26.216S
САЖЕТАК /ABSTRACT:
This paper applies association rule mining techniques, with a focus on the Apriori algorithm, to analyze relationships between symptoms and diseases in medical datasets. The study aims to identify meaningful combinations of symptoms that indicate the presence of specific diseases and to demonstrate the capability of data mining methods in potentially informing clinical reasoning, subject to further validation. The dataset used in this study contains patient information, including symptoms, demographic characteristics, and diagnostic outcomes. After data preprocessing and transformation into a suitable format using one-hot encoding, the Apriori algorithm was applied to extract frequent itemsets and generate association rules. The rules were evaluated using standard metrics such as support, confidence, and lift, allowing the identification of the most relevant and strongly associated patterns. The results reveal notable associations between symptoms and diagnoses. The derived rules demonstrate strong, marked associations between multiple symptoms and disease presence, particularly asthma, as well as potentially important factors such as gender and blood pressure. The findings suggest that association rule mining can serve as a valuable tool in healthcare analytics, contributing to improved understanding of disease patterns and potentially informing clinical decisions, subject to validation.
КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ / KEYWORDS:
association rules; Apriori algorithm; data mining; medical data analysis; symptom-disease relationship
ПРОЈЕКАТ / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
This study was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of the Republic of Serbia, and these results are parts of the Grant No. 451-03-34/2026-03/ 200132 with University of Kragujevac – Faculty of Technical Sciences Čačak.
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