Enhanced forecasting of emergency department patient arrivals using feature engineering approach and machine learning.

Journal: BMC medical informatics and decision making
PMID:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is an important problem in many countries. Accurate predictions of ED patient arrivals can help management to better allocate staff and medical resources. In this study, we investigate the use of calendar and meteorological predictors, as well as feature-engineered variables, to predict daily patient arrivals using datasets from eleven different EDs across three countries.

Authors

  • Bruno Matos Porto
    Industrial Engineering Department, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Osvaldo Aranha 55, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. bmatosporto@gmail.com.
  • Flavio Sanson Fogliatto
    Industrial Engineering Department, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Osvaldo Aranha, 99, 5th floor, Porto Alegre, RS, 90020-035, Brazil.