arXiv subjects

Ettore Lanzarone

Publications and source records attributed to Ettore Lanzarone.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A warning system for risk prediction of metabolic syndrome in a healthy population of blood donors

Metabolic syndrome is a complex clinical condition characterized by the simultaneous presence of multiple metabolic risk factors and represents a major public health concern. The syndrome develops silently and may remain undiagnosed for long periods, highlighting the importance of investigating early metabolic alterations before overt disease onset. Longitudinal monitoring of predominantly healthy individuals may help identify metabolic risk early. The paper proposes a Bayesian statistical model to estimate the probability of metabolic syndrome among blood donors during pre-donation screening, incorporating information collected at previous visits. Using longitudinal data from one of the main blood donor associations in Italy, AVIS Milan, we analyze repeated clinical and lifestyle measurements from a predominantly healthy population of donors. In particular, we fit a Bayesian multivariate model that jointly represents the logarithm of the five diagnostic components of metabolic syndrome. The model accounts for within-donor dependence across repeated visits and provides probabilistic estimates of individual risk. Our framework aims to provide clinicians at AVIS Milan with an interpretable traffic-light warning system (low, intermediate, high risk) during pre-donation screening to facilitate the identification of individuals at risk of metabolic syndrome at future visits and to support targeted preventive interventions during routine donor assessment, ultimately contributing to a long-term reduction in healthcare costs for the Italian national healthcare system.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2025

Prediction accuracy versus rescheduling flexibility in elective surgery management

The availability of downstream resources plays is critical in planning the admission of elective surgery patients. The most crucial one is inpatient beds. To ensure bed availability, hospitals may use machine learning (ML) models to predict patients' length-of-stay (LOS) in the admission planning stage. However, the real value of the LOS for each patient may differ from the predicted one, potentially making the schedule infeasible. To address such infeasibilities, it is possible to implement rescheduling strategies that take advantage of operational flexibility. For example, planners may postpone admission dates, relocate patients to different wards, or even transfer patients who are already admitted among wards. A straightforward assumption is that better LOS predictions can help reduce the impact of rescheduling. However, the training process of ML models that can make such accurate predictions can be very costly. Building on previous work that proposed simulated ML for evaluating data-driven approaches, this paper explores the relationship between LOS prediction accuracy and rescheduling flexibility across various corrective policies. Specifically, we examine the most effective patient rescheduling strategies under LOS prediction errors to prevent bed overflows while optimizing resource utilization

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Robust personnel rostering: how accurate should absenteeism predictions be?

Disruptions to personnel rosters caused by absenteeism often necessitate last-minute adjustments to the employees' working hours. A common strategy to mitigate the impact of such changes is to assign employees to reserve shifts: special on-call duties during which an employee can be called in to cover for an absent employee. To maximize roster robustness, we assume a predict-then-optimize approach that uses absence predictions from a machine learning model to schedule an adequate number of reserve shifts. In this paper we propose a methodology to evaluate the robustness of rosters generated by the predict-then-optimize approach, assuming the machine learning model will make predictions at a predetermined prediction performance level. Instead of training and testing machine learning models, our methodology simulates the predictions based on a characterization of model performance. We show how this methodology can be applied to identify the minimum performance level needed for the model to outperform simple non-data-driven robust rostering policies. In a computational study on a nurse rostering problem, we demonstrate how the predict-then-optimize approach outperforms non-data-driven policies under reasonable performance requirements, particularly when employees possess interchangeable skills.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

Clustering blood donors via mixtures of product partition models with covariates

Motivated by the problem of accurately predicting gap times between successive blood donations, we present here a general class of Bayesian nonparametric models for clustering. These models allow for prediction of new recurrences, accommodating covariate information that describes the personal characteristics of the sample individuals. We introduce a prior for the random partition of the sample individuals which encourages two individuals to be co-clustered if they have similar covariate values. Our prior generalizes PPMx models in the literature, which are defined in terms of cohesion and similarity functions. We assume cohesion functions which yield mixtures of PPMx models, while our similarity functions represent the compactness of a cluster. We show that including covariate information in the prior specification improves the posterior predictive performance and helps interpret the estimated clusters, in terms of covariates in the blood donation application.

stat.ME↗