A secure and light-weight patient survival prediction in Internet of Medical Things framework

Abstract

Thoracic surgeries in major lung resections for primary lung cancer are fraught with potential risks, emphasising the need to understand factors contributing to postoperative mortality. This study investigates the interplay of objective and subjective data in predicting postoperative outcomes to reduce data transmission costs in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Objective metrics, such as forced vital capacity (FVC), offer consistent, quantifiable insights essential for predictive modelling. Conversely, subjective data derived from patient self-reports suggest that the patient's personal experiences are crucial for assessing the quality of life postsurgery. Utilising a dataset from the University of California, Irvine's Machine Learning Repository (UCI), 17 distinct attributes were examined. Using ensemble learning classifiers, the extra trees classifier is superior when utilising all features, achieving an accuracy of 0.92. Combining select subjective features, specifically PRE6, PRE8 and AGE (demographic), with objective data, yielded a comparable accuracy of 0.91. Feature importance analysis further highlights the significance of features like PRE5, PRE4 and AGE. This suggests potential redundancies in the full feature set, emphasising the importance of feature selection. Importantly, when compared with existing literature, this study's findings offer insights into the future of predictive modelling in thoracic surgeries, with implications for the rapidly evolving field of the IoMT.