Improving clinical efficiency in screening for cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's

INTRODUCTION: To reduce demands on expert time and improve clinical efficiency, we developed a framework to evaluate whether inexpensive, accessible data could accurately classify Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical diagnosis and predict the likelihood of progression. METHODS: We stratified relevant data into three tiers: obtainable at primary care (low‐cost), mostly available at specialty visits (medium‐cost), and research‐only (high‐cost). We trained several machine learning models, including a hierarchical model, an ensemble model, and a clustering model, to distinguish between diagnoses of cognitively unimpaired, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia due to AD. RESULTS: All models showed viable classification, but the hierarchical and ensemble models outperformed the conventional model. Classifier “error” was predictive of progression rates, and cluster membership identified subgroups with high and low risk of progression within 1.5 to 3 years. DISCUSSION: Accessible, inexpensive clinical data can be used to guide AD diagnosis and are predictive of current and future disease states. HIGHLIGHTS: Classification performance using cost‐effective features was accurate and robust. Hierarchical classification outperformed conventional multinomial classification. Classification labels indicated significant changes in conversion risk at follow‐up. A clustering‐classification method identified subgroups at high risk of decline.