Big Data Helps Researches Develop Algorithm to Predict Future Health Based on Medical History
Netflix or Amazon make suggestions based on your view and purchase history, as well as the histories of others who share your characteristics — age, location and such. This new algorithm works in a similar way, predicting your future health based on your past health, as well as the medical records and conditions of others like you.
“This provides physicians with insights on what might be coming next for a patient, based on experiences of other patients,” said Tyler McCormick, an assistant professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington who co-authored a new paper on the algorithm.
McCormick and co-authors from MIT and Columbia University used medical records from a multi-year drug trial, which comprised tens of thousands of patients older than age 40. The trial gathered information about those patients’ gender, ethnicity, medical histories and prescriptions, so it provided a wealth of cross-referenceable data.
The problem is that each medical condition only happened a few times, so conditions are sparsely scattered among the patient population. It’s more difficult to make predictions when a few people have a few things wrong with them. To improve matters, McCormick and colleagues used a statistical modeling technique called the Hierarchical Association Rule Model, or HARM. It selects the most likely rules from a larger set of possible rules.
(via With New Prediction Algorithm, a Patient’s Past Foretells His Medical Future | Popular Science)
