Detection of Patients with Influenza Syndrome Using Machine-Learning Models Learned from Emergency Department Reports

Early detection of influenza outbreaks is critical to public health officials. Case detection is the foundation for outbreak detection. Previous study by Elkin el al. demonstrated that using individual emergency department (ED) reports can better detect influenza cases than using chief complaints. Our recent study using ED reports processed by Bayesian networks (using expert constructed network structure) showed high detection accuracy on detection of influenza cases.

Objective

Compare 7 machine learning algorithms with an expert constructed Bayesian network on detection of patients with influenza syndrome.