Self-supervised machine learning using adult inpatient data produces effective models for pediatric clinical prediction tasks

Joshua Lemmon, Lin Lawrence Guo, Ethan Steinberg, Keith E. Morse, Scott Lanyon Fleming, Catherine Aftandilian, Stephen R. Pfohl, José D. Posada, Nigam Shah, Jason Alan Fries, Lillian Sung

Abstract: Development of electronic health records (EHR)-based machine learning models for pediatric inpatients is challenged by limited training data. Self-supervised learning using adult data may be a promising approach to creating robust pediatric prediction models. The primary objective was to determine whether a self-supervised model trained in adult inpatients was noninferior to logistic regression models trained in pediatric inpatients, for pediatric inpatient clinical prediction tasks.