IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0271227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A machine learning model on Real World Data for predicting progression to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) among COVID-19 patients

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Lazzarini
  • Avgoustinos Filippoupolitis
  • Pedro Manzione
  • Hariklia Eleftherohorinou

Abstract

Introduction: Identifying COVID-19 patients that are most likely to progress to a severe infection is crucial for optimizing care management and increasing the likelihood of survival. This study presents a machine learning model that predicts severe cases of COVID-19, defined as the presence of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and highlights the different risk factors that play a significant role in disease progression. Methods: A cohort composed of 289,351 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in April 2020 was created using US administrative claims data from Oct 2015 to Jul 2020. For each patient, information about 817 diagnoses, were collected from the medical history ahead of COVID-19 infection. The primary outcome of the study was the presence of ARDS in the 4 months following COVID-19 infection. The study cohort was randomly split into training set used for model development, test set for model evaluation and validation set for real-world performance estimation. Results: We analyzed three machine learning classifiers to predict the presence of ARDS. Among the algorithms considered, a Gradient Boosting Decision Tree had the highest performance with an AUC of 0.695 (95% CI, 0.679–0.709) and an AUPRC of 0.0730 (95% CI, 0.0676 – 0.0823), showing a 40% performance increase in performance against a baseline classifier. A panel of five clinicians was also used to compare the predictive ability of the model to that of clinical experts. The comparison indicated that our model is on par or outperforms predictions made by the clinicians, both in terms of precision and recall. Conclusion: This study presents a machine learning model that uses patient claims history to predict ARDS. The risk factors used by the model to perform its predictions have been extensively linked to the severity of the COVID-19 in the specialized literature. The most contributing diagnosis can be easily retrieved in the patient clinical history and can be used for an early screening of infected patients. Overall, the proposed model could be a promising tool to deploy in a healthcare setting to facilitate and optimize the care of COVID-19 patients.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Lazzarini & Avgoustinos Filippoupolitis & Pedro Manzione & Hariklia Eleftherohorinou, 2022. "A machine learning model on Real World Data for predicting progression to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) among COVID-19 patients," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(7), pages 1-16, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0271227
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271227
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271227
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271227&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0271227?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Davide Ferrari & Jovana Milic & Roberto Tonelli & Francesco Ghinelli & Marianna Meschiari & Sara Volpi & Matteo Faltoni & Giacomo Franceschi & Vittorio Iadisernia & Dina Yaacoub & Giacomo Ciusa & Eric, 2020. "Machine learning in predicting respiratory failure in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia—Challenges, strengths, and opportunities in a global health emergency," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Lakshya Singhal & Yash Garg & Philip Yang & Azade Tabaie & A Ian Wong & Akram Mohammed & Lokesh Chinthala & Dipen Kadaria & Amik Sodhi & Andre L Holder & Annette Esper & James M Blum & Robert L Davis , 2021. "eARDS: A multi-center validation of an interpretable machine learning algorithm of early onset Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) among critically ill adults with COVID-19," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-17, September.
    3. Takaya Saito & Marc Rehmsmeier, 2015. "The Precision-Recall Plot Is More Informative than the ROC Plot When Evaluating Binary Classifiers on Imbalanced Datasets," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-21, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher J Greenwood & George J Youssef & Primrose Letcher & Jacqui A Macdonald & Lauryn J Hagg & Ann Sanson & Jenn Mcintosh & Delyse M Hutchinson & John W Toumbourou & Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz &, 2020. "A comparison of penalised regression methods for informing the selection of predictive markers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Le, Hong Hanh & Viviani, Jean-Laurent, 2018. "Predicting bank failure: An improvement by implementing a machine-learning approach to classical financial ratios," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 16-25.
    3. João Chang Junior & Fábio Binuesa & Luiz Fernando Caneo & Aida Luiza Ribeiro Turquetto & Elisandra Cristina Trevisan Calvo Arita & Aline Cristina Barbosa & Alfredo Manoel da Silva Fernandes & Evelinda, 2020. "Improving preoperative risk-of-death prediction in surgery congenital heart defects using artificial intelligence model: A pilot study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-21, September.
    4. Arthur De Sá Ferreira & Ney Meziat-Filho & Ana Paula Antunes Ferreira, 2021. "Double threshold receiver operating characteristic plot for three-modal continuous predictors," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 2231-2245, September.
    5. Masabho P Milali & Samson S Kiware & Nicodem J Govella & Fredros Okumu & Naveen Bansal & Serdar Bozdag & Jacques D Charlwood & Marta F Maia & Sheila B Ogoma & Floyd E Dowell & George F Corliss & Maggy, 2020. "An autoencoder and artificial neural network-based method to estimate parity status of wild mosquitoes from near-infrared spectra," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-16, June.
    6. Kajal Lahiri & Cheng Yang, 2023. "ROC and PRC Approaches to Evaluate Recession Forecasts," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 19(2), pages 119-148, September.
    7. Tzu-Hsuan Lin & Jehn-Ruey Jiang, 2021. "Credit Card Fraud Detection with Autoencoder and Probabilistic Random Forest," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(21), pages 1-16, October.
    8. Apostolos Giannoulidis & Anastasios Gounaris & Athanasios Naskos & Nikodimos Nikolaidis & Daniel Caljouw, 2025. "Engineering and evaluating an unsupervised predictive maintenance solution: a cold-forming press case-study," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 2121-2139, March.
    9. Dorian Knoblauch & Jürgen Großmann, 2023. "Towards a Risk-Based Continuous Auditing-Based Certification for Machine Learning," The Review of Socionetwork Strategies, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 255-273, October.
    10. Alfred Krzywicki & David Muchlinski & Benjamin E. Goldsmith & Arcot Sowmya, 2022. "From academia to policy makers: a methodology for real-time forecasting of infrequent events," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 1489-1510, November.
    11. Dueñas, Marco & Ortiz, Víctor & Riccaboni, Massimo & Serti, Francesco, 2021. "Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Trade: a Machine Learning Counterfactual Analysis," Working papers 79, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    12. Simon Tranberg Bodilsen & Søren Albeck Nielsen & Michael Rosholm, 2025. "Measuring employment readiness for hard-to-place individuals," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    13. Wei-Hsuan Lo-Ciganic & Julie M Donohue & Eric G Hulsey & Susan Barnes & Yuan Li & Courtney C Kuza & Qingnan Yang & Jeanine Buchanich & James L Huang & Christina Mair & Debbie L Wilson & Walid F Gellad, 2021. "Integrating human services and criminal justice data with claims data to predict risk of opioid overdose among Medicaid beneficiaries: A machine-learning approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-18, March.
    14. Nica-Avram, Georgiana & Harvey, John & Smith, Gavin & Smith, Andrew & Goulding, James, 2021. "Identifying food insecurity in food sharing networks via machine learning," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 469-484.
    15. Ali J. Ghandour & Huda Hammoud & Samar Al-Hajj, 2020. "Analyzing Factors Associated with Fatal Road Crashes: A Machine Learning Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-13, June.
    16. Song, Kwonsik & Anderson, Kyle & Lee, SangHyun, 2020. "An energy-cyber-physical system for personalized normative messaging interventions: Identification and classification of behavioral reference groups," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    17. Soumadeep Saha & Utpal Garain & Arijit Ukil & Arpan Pal & Sundeep Khandelwal, 2023. "MedTric : A clinically applicable metric for evaluation of multi-label computational diagnostic systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(8), pages 1-19, August.
    18. Fisnik Doko & Slobodan Kalajdziski & Igor Mishkovski, 2021. "Credit Risk Model Based on Central Bank Credit Registry Data," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-17, March.
    19. Abouelmagd THM, 2018. "A New Flexible Distribution Based on the Zero Truncated Poisson Distribution: Mathematical Properties and Applications to Lifetime Data," Biostatistics and Biometrics Open Access Journal, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 8(1), pages 10-16, August.
    20. Bouvatier, Vincent & El Ouardi, Sofiane, 2023. "Credit gaps as banking crisis predictors: A different tune for middle- and low-income countries," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0271227. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.