Using EHRs and Machine Learning for Heart Failure Survival Analysis

'Heart failure (HF) is a frequent health problem with high morbidity and mortality, increasing prevalence and escalating healthcare costs' [1]. By calculating a HF survival risk score based on patient-specific characteristics from Electronic Health Records (EHRs), we can identify high-risk patients and apply individualized treatment and healthy living choices to potentially reduce their mortality risk. The Seattle Heart Failure Model (SHFM) is one of the most popular models to calculate HF survival risk that uses multiple clinical variables to predict HF prognosis and also incorporates impact of HF therapy on patient outcomes. Although the SHFM has been validated across multiple cohorts [1-5], these studies were primarily done using clinical trials databases that do not reflect routine clinical care in the community. Further, the impact of contemporary therapeutic interventions, such as beta-blockers or defibrillators, was incorporated in SHFM by extrapolation from external trials. In this study, we assess the performance of SHFM using EHRs at Mayo Clinic, and sought to develop a risk prediction model using machine learning techiniques that applies routine clinical care data. Our results shows the models which were built using EHR data are more accurate (11% improvement in AUC) with the convenience of being more readily applicable in routine clinical care. Furthermore, we demonstrate that new predictive markers (such as co-morbidities) when incorporated into our models improve prognostic performance significantly (8% improvement in AUC).