DeepSigns: A predictive model based on Deep Learning for the early detection of patient health deterioration

Abstract

Early diagnosis of critically ill patients depends on the attention and observation of medical staff about different variables, as vital signs, results of laboratory tests, among other. Seriously ill patients usually have changes in their vital signs before worsening. Monitoring these changes is important to anticipate the diagnosis in order to initiate patients’ care. Prognostic indexes play a fundamental role in this context since they allow to estimate the patients’ health status. Besides, the adoption of electronic health records improved the availability of data, which can be processed by machine learning techniques for information extraction to support clinical decisions. In this context, this work aims to create a computational model able to predict the deterioration of patients’ health status in such a way that it is possible to start the appropriate treatment as soon as possible. The model was developed based on Deep Learning technique, a Recurrent Neural Networks, the Long Short-Term Memory, for the prediction of patient’s vital signs and subsequent evaluation of the patient’s health status severity through Prognostic Indexes commonly used in the health area. Experiments showed that it is possible to predict vital signs with good precision (accuracy > 80%) and, consequently, predict the Prognostic Indexes in advance to treat the patients before deterioration. Predicting the patient’s vital signs for the future and use them for the Prognostic Index’ calculation allows clinical times to predict future severe diagnoses that would not be possible applying the current patient’s vital signs (50%–60% of cases would not be identified).