JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a rapidly emerging respiratory disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Due to the rapid human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2, many healthcare systems are at risk of exceeding their healthcare capacities, in particular in terms of SARS-CoV-2 tests, hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) beds and mechanical ventilators. Predictive algorithms could potentially ease the strain on healthcare systems by identifying those who are most likely to receive a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, be hospitalised or admitted to the ICU.

Objective:

To develop, study and evaluate clinical predictive models that estimate, using machine learning and based on routinely collected clinical data, which patients are likely to receive a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, require hospitalisation or intensive care.

Methods:

Using a systematic approach to model development and optimisation, we train and compare various types of machine learning models, including logistic regression, neural networks, support vector machines, random forests, and gradient boosting. To evaluate the developed models, we perform a retrospective evaluation on demographic, clinical and blood analysis data from a cohort of 5644 patients. In addition, we determine which clinical features are predictive to what degree for each of the aforementioned clinical tasks using causal explanations.

Results:

Our experimental results indicate that our predictive models identify (i) patients that test positive for SARS-CoV-2 a priori at a sensitivity of 75% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 67%, 81%) and a specificity of 49% (95% CI: 46%, 51%), (ii) SARS-CoV-2 positive patients that require hospitalisation with 0.92 area under the receiver operator characteristic curve [AUC] (95% CI: 0.81, 0.98), and (iii) SARS-CoV-2 positive patients that require critical care with 0.98 AUC (95% CI: 0.95, 1.00).

Conclusions:

Our results indicate that predictive models trained on routinely collected clinical data could be used to predict clinical pathways for COVID-19, and therefore help inform care and prioritise resources.