An application for forecasting the number of applications to the emergency department with time series analysis and machine learning methods

Year 2023, Volume: 29 Issue: 7, 667 - 679, 30.12.2023

Sema Çiftçi Gül Didem Batur Sir

Abstract

Today, the demands for emergency health services show an extraordinary increase in cases such as epidemics, earthquakes, natural disasters, and explosions. The accurate estimation of the demand in question will facilitate the crisis management process for extraordinary situations, as it will enable the determination of the number of people who will apply to the emergency services and the effective realization of the relevant resource planning. In this study, it is aimed to estimate the number of applications to an emergency department. For the seasonal data, SARIMA, Holt-Winters and decomposition, which are among the time series analysis methods; Random tree and random forest techniques from machine learning methods are used. For this forecasting study, 396-day "number of patients admitted" data of a hospital located in Ankara is used. Forecasts in each method are performed for seven, fifteen, and thirty days. Correlation corrected square root and average absolute percentage error values are used to determine the most successful one among demand forecasting methods. In the analyzes made, it is observed that SARIMA method gives more effective results than others in forecasting the number of applications to the emergency department. In addition, because of the constantly changing and dynamic nature of the applications made to the emergency services, it is understood that the change in the forecasted number of days has a significant effect on the resulting forecast values.

Keywords

Demand forecast, Emergency service, Time series analysis, SARIMA, Holt-Winters, Machine learning

Acil servise başvuru sayısının zaman serisi analiz ve makine öğrenmesi yöntemleri ile tahmin edilmesine yönelik bir uygulama

Abstract

Günümüzde, acil sağlık servislerine yönelik talepler, salgın, deprem vb. doğal afetler ile patlamalar gibi durumlarda olağanüstü artış göstermektedir. Söz konusu talebin doğru bir şekilde tahmin edilmesi, acil servislere başvuracak kişi sayısının belirlenmesi ve ilgili kaynak planlamalarının etkin şekilde gerçekleştirilmesini sağlayacağından olağanüstü durumlar için kriz yönetim sürecinde kolaylık sağlayacaktır. Bu çalışmada, bir acil servise başvuru sayısının tahmini amaçlanmaktadır. Ele alınan, mevsimsel özelliklere sahip verilere yönelik olarak, zaman serisi analizi yöntemlerinden SARIMA, HoltWinters ve ayrıştırma; makine öğrenmesi yöntemlerinden rastgele ağaç ve rastgele orman teknikleri kullanılmıştır. Tahmin çalışması için Ankara’ da yer alan bir hastanenin 396 günlük “başvuran hasta sayısı” verisi kullanılmıştır. Her bir yöntemdeki tahminler, yedi, on beş ve otuz günlük olarak yapılmıştır. Talep tahmini yöntemlerinden en başarılı yöntemin belirlenebilmesi için korelasyon, düzeltilmiş RKARE ve ortalama mutlak yüzde hatası değerlerinden faydalanılmıştır. Yapılan analizlerde SARIMA yönteminin, acil servise yapılacak başvuru sayısının tahmin edilmesinde diğer yöntemlere göre daha etkili sonuçlar verdiği görülmüştür. Ayrıca, acil servislere yapılan başvuruların sürekli değişen, dinamik bir yapıya sahip olmasının bir sonucu olarak, tahmin edilen gün sayısındaki değişimin tahmin değerleri üzerinde önemli etkisi olduğu da anlaşılmıştır.

Keywords

Talep tahmini, Acil servis, Zaman serisi analizi, SARIMA, Holt-Winters, Makine öğrenmesi

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