Medical data classification for prediction of early chronic kidney disease

Abstract: Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) or chronic renal disease has become a major issue with a steady growth rate. A person can only survive without kidneys for an average time of 18 days, which makes a huge demand for a kidney transplant and Dialysis. It is important to have effective methods for early prediction of CKD. Machine learning methods are effective in CKD prediction. This document proposes a workflow to predict CKD status based on clinical data, incorporating data prepossessing, a missing value handling method with collaborative filtering and attributes selection. Out of the machine learning methods considered, the extra tree classifier and random forest classifier are shown to result in the highest accuracy and minimal bias to the attributes. We also consider the practical aspects of data collection and highlights the importance of incorporating domain knowledge when using machine learning for CKD status prediction.

Keywords: Chronic Kidney Disease, Data Mining, Classification, Healthcare, Machine Learning.