Predictive modeling of hospital Length of Stay in COVID-19 patients using Artificial Neural Networks  

Background: The current pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) causes unexpected economic burdens to worldwide health organizations with severe shortages in hospital bed capacity and other related medical resources. Therefore, predicting the length of stay (LOS) is essential to ensure optimal allocating scarce hospital resources and inform evidence-based decision-making. Thus, the purpose of this research is to construct a model for predicting COVID-19 patients' hospital LOS by multiple multilayer perceptron-artificial neural network (MLP-ANN) algorithms. Material and MethodsUsing a single-center registry, the records of 1225 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalized cases from February 9, 2020, to December 20, 2020, were analyzed. The correlation coefficient technique was developed to determine the most significant variables as the input of the ANN models. Only variables with a correlation coefficient at the P-value< 0.2 were used in model construction. Ultimately the prediction models were developed based on 12 ANN techniques according to selected variables. ResultsAfter implementing feature selection, a total of 20 variables was determined as the most relevant predictors to build the models. The results indicated that the best performance belongs to a neural network with 20 and 10 neurons in the hidden layer of the Bayesian Regularization classifier for whole and selected features with RMSE of 1.6213 and 2.2332, respectively. ConclusionThe developed model in this study can help in the better calculation of LOS in COVID-19 patients. This model also can be leveraged in hospital bed management and optimized resource utilization.