Joint Hierarchical Gaussian Process Model with Application to Forecast in Medical Monitoring
This work addresses forecasting challenges for cystic fibrosis patients by providing a method to predict lung function and acute respiratory events, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing hierarchical and joint modeling techniques.
The authors tackled the problem of longitudinal forecasting in medical monitoring by proposing a joint hierarchical Gaussian process model that combines population trends and individual history, achieving high accuracy in forecasting and robustness in simulation studies.
A novel extrapolation method is proposed for longitudinal forecasting. A hierarchical Gaussian process model is used to combine nonlinear population change and individual memory of the past to make prediction. The prediction error is minimized through the hierarchical design. The method is further extended to joint modeling of continuous measurements and survival events. The baseline hazard, covariate and joint effects are conveniently modeled in this hierarchical structure. The estimation and inference are implemented in fully Bayesian framework using the objective and shrinkage priors. In simulation studies, this model shows robustness in latent estimation, correlation detection and high accuracy in forecasting. The model is illustrated with medical monitoring data from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Estimation and forecasts are obtained in the measurement of lung function and records of acute respiratory events. Keyword: Extrapolation, Joint Model, Longitudinal Model, Hierarchical Gaussian Process, Cystic Fibrosis, Medical Monitoring