A Combined Model of SARIMA and Prophet Models in Forecasting AIDS Incidence in Henan Province, China

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a serious public health problem. This study aims to establish a combined model of seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) and Prophet models based on an L1-norm to predict the incidence of AIDS in Henan province, China. The monthly incidences of AIDS in Henan province from 2012 to 2020 were obtained from the Health Commission of Henan Province. A SARIMA model, a Prophet model, and two combined models were adopted to fit the monthly incidence of AIDS using the data from January 2012 to December 2019. The data from January 2020 to December 2020 was used to verify. The mean square error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were used to compare the prediction effect among the models. The results showed that the monthly incidence fluctuated from 0.05 to 0.50 per 100,000 individuals, and the monthly incidence of AIDS had a certain periodicity in Henan province. In addition, the prediction effect of the Prophet model was better than SARIMA model, the combined model was better than the single models, and the combined model based on the L1-norm had the best effect values (MSE = 0.0056, MAE = 0.0553, MAPE = 43.5337). This indicated that, compared with the L2-norm, the L1-norm improved the prediction accuracy of the combined model. The combined model of SARIMA and Prophet based on the L1-norm is a suitable method to predict the incidence of AIDS in Henan. Our findings can provide theoretical evidence for the government to formulate policies regarding AIDS prevention.