Medication Adherence Prediction Through Online Social Forums: A Case Study of Fibromyalgia

BACKGROUND: Medication nonadherence can compound into severe medical problems for patients. Identifying patients who are likely to become nonadherent may help reduce these problems. Data-driven machine learning models can predict medication adherence by using selected indicators from patients’ past health records. Sources of data for these models traditionally fall under two main categories: (1) proprietary data from insurance claims, pharmacy prescriptions, or electronic medical records and (2) survey data collected from representative groups of patients. Models developed using these data sources often are limited because they are proprietary, subject to high cost, have limited scalability, or lack timely accessibility. These limitations suggest that social health forums might be an alternate source of data for adherence prediction. Indeed, these data are accessible, affordable, timely, and available at scale. However, they can be inaccurate. OBJECTIVE: This paper proposes a medication adherence machine learning model for fibromyalgia therapies that can mitigate the inaccuracy of social health forum data. METHODS: Transfer learning is a machine learning technique that allows knowledge acquired from one dataset to be transferred to another dataset. In this study, predictive adherence models for the target disease were first developed by using accurate but limited survey data. These models were then used to predict medication adherence from health social forum data. Random forest, an ensemble machine learning technique, was used to develop the predictive models. This transfer learning methodology is demonstrated in this study by examining data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the PatientsLikeMe social health forum. RESULTS: When the models are carefully designed, less than a 5% difference in accuracy is observed between the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the PatientsLikeMe medication adherence predictions for fibromyalgia treatments. This design must take into consideration the mapping between the predictors and the outcomes in the two datasets. CONCLUSIONS: This study exemplifies the potential and limitations of transfer learning in medication adherence–predictive models based on survey data and social health forum data. The proposed approach can make timely medication adherence monitoring cost-effective and widely accessible. Additional investigation is needed to improve the robustness of the approach and extend its applicability to other therapies and other sources of data.