The core interest of this research group is in improving the quality of health and educational services at local, regional and national levels, through a program of applied research and close involvement with the Italian Ministry of Health, the Italian Institute for the Evaluation of Educational Systems (Invalsi) and other healthcare/educational organizations and institutions. Studying and monitoring outcomes and process indicators in healthcare and educational processes allow decision makers to improve the system performance with an optimized resource allocation; indeed, decision-makers involved in public administration (health/education) need information about efficiency and effectiveness of provided services. We propose an innovative knowledge discovery model that takes advantage by the massive use of administrative data that have been collected only with storage and control purposes. Administrative datasets are naturally updated, complete and available with a lower cost with respect to ad-hoc data collections. Even if their use has been questioned, the recent statistical literature points out that the risks of biased results can be minimized with suitable statistical and reporting techniques. Conditionally to a field of interest (pathology or pattern of care for health care students’ achievement for education) a main outcome jointly with possibly quite secondary ones, are pointed out. To improve the outcomes is mandatory to understand the variables correlated, and their causal impact on them if any. Specifically the variability affecting outcomes can be decomposed in many different sources. Due to the natural hierarchical structure of data (patients within divisions, divisions within hospitals, pupils within classes, classes within schools, …) they are affected by over-dispersion that can be catched and modeled by means of suitable statistical models (i.e. hierarchical models, mixed effect models,…).
The main objects of the research are then i) identification and study of the outcomes and process indicators for the problem of interest, ii) monitoring and analysis of these parameters, iii) supporting decisions in order to improve the process, iv) checking of the change effectiveness, or at least implementing a method for this and testing it; v) increasing the present awareness about the value of opening and using administrative databases for informing decision-making and promote both the public and the private funding of further researches in this direction.