Application of random forest model to predict the demand of essential medicines for non-communicable diseases management in public health facilities

INTRODUCTION: recent initiatives in healthcare reform have pushed for a better understanding of data complexity and revolution. Given the global prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) and the economic and clinical burden they impose, it is recommended that the management of essential medicines used to treat them be renovated and optimized through the application of predictive modeling such a RF model. METHODS: in this study, a series of data pre-processing activities were used to select the top seventeen (17) NCD essential medicines most commonly used for treating common and frequent NCD. The study focused on machine learning (ML) applications, whereby a random forest (RF) model was applied to predict the demand using essential medicines consumption data from 2015 to 2019 for approximately 500 medical products. RESULTS: with a seventy-eight (78) percent accuracy rate for the training set and a 71 percent accuracy rate for the testing set, the RF model predicted the trend in demand for 17 NCD essential medicines. This was achieved by entering the month, year, district, and name of the NCD essential medicine. Based on historical consumption data, the RF model can thus be used to predict demand trends. Our findings showed that the RF model is talented to commendably perform as a predicting model. CONCLUSION: the study concluded that RF has the ability to optimize health supply chain planning and operational management by boosting the accuracy in predicting the demand trend for NCD essential medicines.