A Machine Learning Model for Accurate Prediction of Sepsis in ICU Patients in China

Abstract Background: Although numerous studies are conducted every year on how to reduce the fatality rate associated with sepsis, it is still a major challenge faced by patients, clinicians, and medical systems worldwide. Early identification and prediction of patients at risk of sepsis and adverse outcomes associated with sepsis are critical. We aimed to develop an artificial intelligence algorithm that can predict sepsis early.Methods: This was a secondary analysis of an observational cohort study from the Intensive Care Unit of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. A total of 4449 infected patients were randomly assigned to the development and validation data set at a ratio of 4:1. After extracting electronic medical record data, a set of 55 features (variables) was calculated and passed to the random forest algorithm to predict the onset of sepsis.Results: The pre-procedure clinical variables were used to build a prediction model from the training data set using the random forest machine learning method; a 5-fold cross-validation was used to evaluate the prediction accuracy of the model. Finally, we tested the model using the validation data set. The area obtained by the model under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) was 0.91, the sensitivity was 87%, and the specificity was 89%.Conclusions: The newly established model can accurately predict the onset of sepsis in ICU patients in clinical settings as early as possible. Prospective studies are necessary to determine the clinical utility of the proposed sepsis prediction model.