A Novel Strategy to Classify Chronic Patients at Risk: A Hybrid Machine Learning Approach

Fabián Silva-Aravena (), Hugo Núñez Delafuente and César A. Astudillo ()
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Fabián Silva-Aravena: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Económicas, Universidad Católica del Maule, Avenida San Miguel 3605, Talca 3466706, Chile
Hugo Núñez Delafuente: Doctorado en Sistemas de Ingeniería, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Curicó 3340000, Chile
César A. Astudillo: Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Curicó 3340000, Chile

Mathematics, 2022, vol. 10, issue 17, 1-17

Abstract: Various care processes have been affected by COVID-19. One of the most dramatic has been the care of chronic patients under medical supervision. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a chronic patient has one or more long-term illnesses, and must be permanently monitored by the health team.. In fact, and according to the Chilean Ministry of Health (MINSAL), 7 out of 10 chronic patients have suspended their medical check-ups, generating critical situations, such as a more significant number of visits to emergency units, expired prescriptions, and a higher incidence in hospitalization rates. For this problem, health services in Chile have had to reschedule their scarce medical resources to provide care in all health processes. One element that has been considered is caring through telemedicine and patient prioritization. In the latter case, the aim was to provide timely care to those critical patients with high severity and who require immediate clinical attention. For this reason, in this work, we present the following methodological contributions: first, an unsupervised algorithm that analyzes information from anonymous patients to classify them according to priority levels; and second, rules that allow health teams to understand which variable(s) determine the classification of patients. The results of the proposed methodology allow classifying new patients with 99.96% certainty using a three-level decision tree and five classification rules.

Keywords: chronic patient; classification rules; machine learning; decision support systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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