From population- to patient-based prediction of in-hospital mortality in heart failure using machine learning

AIMS: Utilizing administrative data may facilitate risk prediction in heart failure inpatients. In this short report, we present different machine learning models that predict in-hospital mortality on an individual basis utilizing this widely available data source. METHODS AND RESULTS: Inpatient cases with a main discharge diagnosis of heart failure hospitalized between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2018 in one of 86 German Helios hospitals were examined. Comorbidities were defined by ICD-10 codes from administrative data. The data set was randomly split into 75/25% portions for model development and testing. Five algorithms were evaluated: logistic regression [generalized linear models (GLMs)], random forest (RF), gradient boosting machine (GBM), single-layer neural network (NNET), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). After model tuning, the receiver operating characteristics area under the curves (ROC AUCs) were calculated and compared with DeLong’s test. A total of 59 074 inpatient cases (mean age 77.6 ± 11.1 years, 51.9% female, 89.4% NYHA Class III/IV) were included and in-hospital mortality was 6.2%. In the test data set, calculated ROC AUCs were 0.853 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.842–0.863] for GLM, 0.851 (95% CI 0.840–0.862) for RF, 0.855 (95% CI 0.844–0.865) for GBM, 0.836 (95% CI 0.823–0.849) for NNET, and 0.856 (95% CI 9.846–0.867) for XGBoost. XGBoost outperformed all models except GBM. CONCLUSION: Machine learning-based processing of administrative data enables the creation of well-performing prediction models for in-hospital mortality in heart failure patients.