From predictions to prescriptions: A data-driven response to COVID-19.

Journal: Health care management science
Published Date: Jun 1, 2021

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges worldwide. Strained healthcare providers make difficult decisions on patient triage, treatment and care management on a daily basis. Policy makers have imposed social distancing measures to slow the disease, at a steep economic price. We design analytical tools to support these decisions and combat the pandemic. Specifically, we propose a comprehensive data-driven approach to understand the clinical characteristics of COVID-19, predict its mortality, forecast its evolution, and ultimately alleviate its impact. By leveraging cohort-level clinical data, patient-level hospital data, and census-level epidemiological data, we develop an integrated four-step approach, combining descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics. First, we aggregate hundreds of clinical studies into the most comprehensive database on COVID-19 to paint a new macroscopic picture of the disease. Second, we build personalized calculators to predict the risk of infection and mortality as a function of demographics, symptoms, comorbidities, and lab values. Third, we develop a novel epidemiological model to project the pandemic's spread and inform social distancing policies. Fourth, we propose an optimization model to re-allocate ventilators and alleviate shortages. Our results have been used at the clinical level by several hospitals to triage patients, guide care management, plan ICU capacity, and re-distribute ventilators. At the policy level, they are currently supporting safe back-to-work policies at a major institution and vaccine trial location planning at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and have been integrated into the US Center for Disease Control's pandemic forecast.

Authors

  • Dimitris Bertsimas
    Dimitris Bertsimas, Jack Dunn, Colin Pawlowski, John Silberholz, Alexander Weinstein, and Ying Daisy Zhuo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Eddy Chen, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center; Harvard Medical School; Aymen A. Elfiky, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Brigham and Women's Hospital; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
  • Leonard Boussioux
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Ryan Cory-Wright
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Arthur Delarue
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Vassilis Digalakis
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Alexandre Jacquillat
    Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
  • Driss Lahlou Kitane
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Galit Lukin
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Michael Li
    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 1 Gustave L. Levy Pl, New York, NY.
  • Luca Mingardi
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Omid Nohadani
    Benefits Science Technologies, Boston, MA 02110, USA.
  • Agni Orfanoudaki
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
  • Theodore Papalexopoulos
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Ivan Paskov
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Jean Pauphilet
    London Business School, London, NW1 4SA, UK.
  • Omar Skali Lami
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Bartolomeo Stellato
    Operations Research and Financial EngineeringPrinceton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
  • Hamza Tazi Bouardi
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Kimberly Villalobos Carballo
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
  • Holly Wiberg
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
  • Cynthia Zeng
    Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

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