A predictive analytics framework for identifying patients at risk of developing multiple medical complications caused by chronic diseases

Abstract

Chronic diseases often cause several medical complications. This paper aims to predict multiple complications among patients with a chronic disease. The literature uses single-task learning algorithms to predict complications independently and assumes no correlation among complications of chronic diseases. We propose two methods (independent prediction of complications with single-task learning and concurrent prediction of complications with multi-task learning) and show that medical complications of chronic diseases can be correlated. We use a case study and compare the performance of these two methods by predicting complications of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy on 106 predictors in 1078 electronic medical records from April 2009-April 2017, inclusive. The methods are implemented using logistic regression, artificial neural networks, decision trees, and support vector machines. The results show multi-task learning with logistic regression improves the performance of predictions in terms of both discrimination and calibration.