Mixed-Integer Projections for Automated Data Correction of EMRs Improve Predictions of Sepsis among Hospitalized Patients

Machine learning (ML) models are increasingly pivotal in automating clinical decisions. Yet, a glaring oversight in prior research has been the lack of proper processing of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data in the clinical context for errors and outliers. Addressing this oversight, we introduce an innovative projections-based method that seamlessly integrates clinical expertise as domain constraints, generating important meta-data that can be used in ML workflows. In particular, by using high-dimensional mixed-integer programs that capture physiological and biological constraints on patient vitals and lab values, we can harness the power of mathematical "projections" for the EMR data to correct patient data. Consequently, we measure the distance of corrected data from the constraints defining a healthy range of patient data, resulting in a unique predictive metric we term as "trust-scores". These scores provide insight into the patient's health status and significantly boost the performance of ML classifiers in real-life clinical settings. We validate the impact of our framework in the context of early detection of sepsis using ML. We show an AUROC of 0.865 and a precision of 0.922, that surpasses conventional ML models without such projections.