Patient trajectory prediction in the Mimic-III dataset, challenges and pitfalls

Automated medical prognosis has gained interest as artificial intelligence evolves and the potential for computer-aided medicine becomes evident. Nevertheless, it is challenging to design an effective system that, given a patient's medical history, is able to predict probable future conditions. Previous works, mostly carried out over private datasets, have tackled the problem by using artificial neural network architectures that cannot deal with low-cardinality datasets, or by means of non-generalizable inference approaches. We introduce a Deep Learning architecture whose design results from an intensive experimental process. The final architecture is based on two parallel Minimal Gated Recurrent Unit networks working in bi-directional manner, which was extensively tested with the open-access Mimic-III dataset. Our results demonstrate significant improvements in automated medical prognosis, as measured with Recall@k. We summarize our experience as a set of relevant insights for the design of Deep Learning architectures. Our work improves the performance of computer-aided medicine and can serve as a guide in designing artificial neural networks used in prediction tasks.