Chapter 15 Predictive Modeling in Health Care Data Analytics: A Sustainable Supervised Learning Technique

With the advent of Big Data, the ability to store and use the unprecedented amount of clinical information is now feasible via Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The massive collection of clinical data by health care systems and treatment canters can be productively used to perform predictive analytics on treatment plans to improve patient health outcomes. These massive data sets have stimulated opportunities to adapt computational algorithms to track and identify target areas for quality improvement in health care. According to a report from Association of American Medical Colleges, there will be an alarming gap between demand and supply of health care work force in near future. The projections show that, by 2032 there is will be a shortfall of between 46,900 and 121,900 physicians in US (AAMC, 2019). Therefore, early prediction of health care risks is a demanding requirement to improve health care quality and reduce health care costs. Predictive analytics uses historical data and algorithms based on either statistics or machine learning to develop predictive models that capture important trends. These models have the ability to predict the likelihood of the future events. Predictive models developed using supervised machine learning approaches are commonly applied for various health care problems such as disease diagnosis, treatment selection, and treatment personalization. This chapter provides an overview of various machine learning and statistical techniques for developing predictive models. Case examples from the extant literature are provided to illustrate the role of predictive modeling in health care research. Together with adaptation of these predictive modeling techniques with Big Data analytics underscores the need for standardization and transparency while recognizing the opportunities and challenges ahead.