Chronic heart failure (CHF) affects over 26 million of people worldwide, and its incidence is increasing by 2% annually. Despite the significant burden that CHF poses and despite the ubiquity of sensors in our lives, methods for automatically detecting CHF are surprisingly scarce, even in the research community. We present a method for CHF detection based on heart sounds. The method combines classic Machine-Learning (ML) and end-to-end Deep Learning (DL). The classic ML learns from expert features, and the DL learns from a spectro-temporal representation of the signal. The method was evaluated on recordings from 947 subjects from six publicly available datasets and one CHF dataset that was collected for this study. Using the same evaluation method as a recent PhysoNet challenge, the proposed method achieved a score of 89.3, which is 9.1 higher than the challenge's baseline method. The method's aggregated accuracy is 92.9% (error of 7.1%); while the experimental results are not directly comparable, this error rate is relatively close to the percentage of recordings labeled as “unknown” by experts (9.7%). Finally, we identified 15 expert features that are useful for building ML models to differentiate between CHF phases (i.e., in the decompensated phase during hospitalization and in the recompensated phase) with an accuracy of 93.2%. The proposed method shows promising results both for the distinction of recordings between healthy subjects and patients and for the detection of different CHF phases. This may lead to the easier identification of new CHF patients and the development of home-based CHF monitors for avoiding hospitalizations.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) represents a heavy burden on the healthcare system because of the increasing number of patients, high risk of progression to end-stage renal disease, and poor prognosis of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study is to develop a machine-learning model that uses the comorbidity and medication data obtained from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database to forecast the occurrence of CKD within the next 6 or 12 months before its onset, and hence its prevalence in the population. A total of 18,000 people with CKD and 72,000 people without CKD diagnosis were selected using propensity score matching. Their demographic, medication and comorbidity data from their respective two-year observation period were used to build a predictive model. Among the approaches investigated, the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) model performed best with a test set AUROC of 0.957 and 0.954 for the 6-month and 12-month predictions, respectively. The most prominent predictors in the tree-based models were identified, including diabetes mellitus, age, gout, and medications such as sulfonamides and angiotensins. The model proposed in this study could be a useful tool for policymakers in predicting the trends of CKD in the population. The models can allow close monitoring of people at risk, early detection of CKD, better allocation of resources, and patient-centric management.

We present a study of buzzing sounds of several common species of bumblebees, with the focus on automatic classification of bumblebee species and types. Such classification is useful for bumblebee monitoring, which is important in view of evaluating the quality of their living environment and protecting the biodiversity of these important pollinators. We analysed natural buzzing frequencies for queens and workers of 12 species. In addition, we analysed changes in buzzing of Bombus hypnorum worker for different types of behaviour. We developed a bumblebee classification application using machine learning algorithms. We extracted audio features from sound recordings using a large feature library. We used the best features to train a classification model, with Random Forest proving to be the best training algorithm on the testing set of samples. The web and mobile application also allows expert users to upload new recordings that can be later used to improve the classification model and expand it to include more species.

Starting renal replacement therapy (RRT) for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) at an optimal time, either with hemodialysis or kidney transplantation, is crucial for patient’s well-being and for successful management of the condition. In this paper, we explore the possibilities of creating forecasting models to predict the onset of RRT 3, 6, and 12 months from the time of the patient’s first diagnosis with CKD, using only the comorbidities data from National Health Insurance from Taiwan. The goal of this study was to see whether a limited amount of data (including comorbidities but not considering laboratory values which are expensive to obtain in low- and medium-income countries) can provide a good basis for such predictive models. On the other hand, in developed countries, such models could allow policy-makers better planning and allocation of resources for treatment. Using data from 8,492 patients, we obtained the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.773 for predicting RRT within 12 months from the time of CKD diagnosis. The results also show that there is no additional advantage in focusing only on patients with diabetes in terms of prediction performance. Although these results are not as such suitable for adoption into clinical practice, the study provides a strong basis and a variety of approaches for future studies of forecasting models in healthcare.