Oh, The Things We Can Predict!

Philip K. Dick presented us with a short story about the “precogs”, three mutants that foresaw all crime before it could occur. “The Minority Report” was written in 1956 – and, now, 60 years later we do indeed have all manner of digital tools to predict outcomes. However, I doubt Steven Spielberg will be adapting a predictive model for hospitalization for cinema.

This is a rather simple article looking at a single-center experience at using multivariate logistic regression to predict hospitalization. This differs, somewhat, from the existing art in that it uses data available at 10, 60, and 120 minutes from the arrival to the Emergency Department as the basis for its “progressive” modeling.

Based on 58,179 visits ending in discharge and 22,683 resulting in hospitalization, the specificity of their prediction method was 90% with a sensitivity or 96%,for an AUC of 0.97. Their work exceeds prior studies mostly on account of improved specificity, compared with the AUCs of a sample of other predictive models generally between 0.85 and 0.89.

Of course, their model is of zero value to other institutions as it will overfit not only on this subset of data, but also the specific practice patterns of physicians in their hospital. Their results also conceivably could be improved, as they do not actually take into account any test results – only the presence of the order for such. That said, I think it is reasonable to suggest similar performance from temporal models for predicting admission including these earliest orders and entries in the electronic health record.

For hospitals interested in improving patient flow and anticipating disposition, there may be efficiencies to be developed from this sort of informatics solution.

“Progressive prediction of hospitalisation in the emergency department: uncovering hidden patterns to improve patient flow”
http://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2017/02/10/emermed-2014-203819