Affiliations: [a] Centre of Image and Signal Processing, Department of Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | [b] Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia | [c] Department of Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Chee Seng Chan, Centre of Image and Signal Processing, Department of Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 3 7967 6433; E-mail: cs.chan@um.edu.my.
Abstract: Hospital readmission is a major cost for healthcare systems worldwide. If patients with a higher potential of readmission could be identified at the start, existing resources could be used more efficiently, and appropriate plans could be implemented to reduce the risk of readmission. Therefore, it is important to predict the right target patients. Medical data is usually noisy, incomplete, and inconsistent. Hence, before developing a prediction model, it is crucial to efficiently set up the predictive model so that improved predictive performance is achieved. The current study aims to analyse the impact of different preprocessing methods on the performance of different machine learning classifiers. The preprocessing applied by previous hospital readmission studies were compared, and the most common approaches highlighted such as missing value imputation, feature selection, data balancing, and feature scaling. The hyperparameters were selected using Bayesian optimisation. The different preprocessing pipelines were assessed using various performance metrics and computational costs. The results indicated that the preprocessing approaches helped improve the model’s prediction of hospital readmission.
