Book excerpt: THE SERIES: INTELLIGENT BIOMEDICAL DATA ANALYSIS By focusing on the methods and tools for intelligent data analysis, this series aims to narrow the increasing gap between data gathering and data comprehension. Emphasis is also given to the problems resulting from automated data collection in modern hospitals, such as analysis of computer-based patient records, data warehousing tools, intelligent alarming, effective and efficient monitoring. In medicine, overcoming this gap is crucial since medical decision making needs to be supported by arguments based on existing medical knowledge as well as information, regularities and trends extracted from big data sets.