Improving Patient Care – saving & improving lives ..

better, faster, and more efficiently

Through the Integrated Digital Response Management (iDRM) solution:
October 2018

The Urgent imperative for Artificial Intelligence

“Rule based” systems which rely on human domain knowledge can no longer compete with the
powerful “pattern recognition” capability of computers. Various studies already show that. We
live in a world of ‘ever increasing’ volumes of patient data, with different data formats (variety)
as “text notes”, “voice notes”, X-rays etc. “Machine Learning” is our best chance to detect
various health signals at an individual patient level – more effectively, and much earlier.
In this article, we provide examples from clinical psychology & modern retail, and provide
intuition behind “Pattern recognition”

• Predicting Risk of Suicide Attempt over time: with Machine Learning

50 years of research based on traditional statistical analysis hasn’t improved our guess on who’ll try to
commit suicide. The traditional risk factors such as clinical depression, substance abuse, stress could
muster an accuracy level not much better than random guessing (50-60%).
Machine Learning can predict with 80-90% accuracy, 2 years into the future, who is most at risk of
committing suicide. This increases to 92% a week before suicide attempts.

What’s different with Machine Learning:

By combing through hundreds of data points and factors, “The machine learns the optimal
combination of risk factors” for each individual, and presents an “At Risk of Suicide” score for each.
We can then put in targeted efforts to save that individual. Right now we are missing large
proportions of the population

REFERENCE
Walsh, C. G., Ribeiro, J. D., & Franklin, J. C. (2017). Predicting Risk of Suicide Attempts Over Time
Through Machine Learning. Clinical Psychological Science

Data Science Technologies (Pvt) Ltd www.ivychain.com

 • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML): what is it, and what’s the big deal

“Pregnant women start buying large amounts of Unscented lotion around the beginning of their 2nd
trimester. As soon as the likelihood of a lady being pregnant is identified, we should send her coupons
of products she’ll need now, in her 3rd trimester, and (closer to delivery) as she enters the BabyCare
category”. This is from a story reported by Forbes on Target’s marketing analytics. Of the 1000’s of
products that Target sells, they were able to assign a “pregnancy score” based on the ML-enabled
“auto pattern discovery” on historic purchase patterns of 25 items, across millions of shoppers. This
exercise was important for Target, since they wanted to “hook on” to-be mothers to buy from them,
as they entered the BabyCare category.

Such insights are possible through a new breed of multivariate statistical modeling techniques which
come under a branch of mathematics called “Machine Learning”. ML enables us to learn highly
complex patterns & rules in the underlying datasets, without coding of the business logic.
Traditionally, business logic (through a specification document) was provided by domain experts to be
encoded into computer software. As humans, we provide patterns in our specifications which
conform to our values, beliefs and experiences. Unlike humans, the machines are not held prisoners
to “cognitive biases”. There are 2 broad disciplines under ML - “Supervised Learning” (SL) and “Un-
supervised Learning” (USL)
Supervised Learning: Through a range of SL models, machines can find those “intricate associations”
which are predictive of an event. The associations are found by sifting through millions of data points
and thousands of factors. For example, Dr Ribiero’s team input millions of records into the SL models,
alongwith a label (committed suicide or not). The models constructed complex mathematical patterns
to link the input to the output. Humans had been missing these patterns for years. For example:
While certain factors were consistent in predicting suicides (psychotic disorders, recurrent
depression), other factors emerged closer to the suicide (e.g age, prescription for melatonin receptor
agonists, certain substance use)
Un-Supervised Learning: Many times, the labeled datasets aren’t available. The USL set of algorithms
use sophisticated “auto pattern discovery mechanisms” to cluster data into “homogenous segments”.
For example, the USL models might identify a segment which is a combination of low socio-economic
indicators, low health indicators, but high IQ people. Targeted interventions could then be made to
up-skill such citizens which make better use of their high IQ
Text Analytic and Mining algorithms convert text into numbers, and then put them through a range
of statistical analysis and “extract contextually relevant information”. For example, TAM can
distinguish between “I need to get my tickets booked” vs “I have booked my tickets”.

CONTACT: Sandeep.seth@dsthub.com

Data Science Technologies (Pvt) Ltd www.ivychain.com