Health Risk Assessment Using Machine Learning: Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
According to the World Health Organization, chronic illnesses account for over 70% of deaths globally, underscoring the need for effective health risk assessment (HRA). While machine learning (ML) has shown potential in enhancing HRA, no systematic review has explored its application in general health risk assessments. Existing reviews typically focus on specific conditions. This paper reviews published articles that utilize ML for HRA, and it aims to identify the model development methods. A systematic review following Tranfield et al.’s three-stage approach was conducted, and it adhered to the PRISMA protocol. The literature was sourced from five databases, including PubMed. Of the included articles, 42% (11/26) addressed general health risks. Secondary data sources were most common (14/26, 53.85%), while primary data were used in eleven studies, with nine (81.81%) using data from a specific population. Random forest was the most popular algorithm, which was used in nine studies (34.62%). Notably, twelve studies implemented multiple algorithms, while seven studies incorporated model interpretability techniques. Although these studies have shown promise in addressing digital health inequities, more research is needed to include diverse sample populations, particularly from underserved communities, to enhance the generalizability of existing models. Furthermore, model interpretability should be prioritized to ensure transparent, trustworthy, and broadly applicable healthcare solutions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.105 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".