Predictive Approaches for Low-Cost Preventive Medicine Program in Developing Countries

Yukino Baba, Hisashi Kashima, Yasunobu Nohara, Eiko Kai, Partha Pratim Ghosh, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Ashir Ahmed, Masahiro Kuroda, Sozo Inoue, Tatsuo Hiramatsu, Michio Kimura, Shuji Shimizu, Kunihisa Kobayashi, Koji Tsuda, Masashi Sugiyama, Mathieu Blondel, Naonori Ueda, Masaru Kitsuregawa, Naoki Nakashima

Abstract: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are no longer just a problem for high-income countries, but they are also a problem that affects developing countries. Preventive medicine is definitely the key to combat NCDs; however, the cost of preventive programs is a critical issue affecting the popularization of these medicine programs in developing countries. In this study, we investigate predictive modeling for providing a low-cost preventive medicine program. In our two-year-long field study in Bangladesh, we collected the health checkup results of 15,075 subjects, the data of 6,607 prescriptions, and the follow-up examination results of 2,109 subjects. We address three prediction problems, namely subject risk prediction, drug recommendation, and future risk prediction, by using machine learning techniques; our multiple-classifier approach successfully reduced the costs of health checkups, a multi-task learning method provided accurate recommendation for specific types of drugs, and an active learning method achieved an efficient assignment of healthcare workers for the follow-up care of subjects.