Predicting Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Pancreatectomy Using Wearable Technology and Machine Learning: Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Background Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths, and although pancreatectomy is currently the only curative treatment, it is associated with significant morbidity. Objective The objective of this study was to evaluate the utility of wearable telemonitoring technologies to predict treatment outcomes using patient activity metrics and machine learning. Methods In this prospective, single-center, single-cohort study, patients scheduled for pancreatectomy were provided with a wearable telemonitoring device to be worn prior to surgery. Patient clinical data were collected and all patients were evaluated using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program surgical risk calculator (ACS-NSQIP SRC). Machine learning models were developed to predict whether patients would have a textbook outcome and compared with the ACS-NSQIP SRC using area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curves. Results Between February 2019 and February 2020, 48 patients completed the study. Patient activity metrics were collected over an average of 27.8 days before surgery. Patients took an average of 4162.1 (SD 4052.6) steps per day and had an average heart rate of 75.6 (SD 14.8) beats per minute. Twenty-eight (58%) patients had a textbook outcome after pancreatectomy. The group of 20 (42%) patients who did not have a textbook outcome included 14 patients with severe complications and 11 patients requiring readmission. The ACS-NSQIP SRC had an AUROC curve of 0.6333 to predict failure to achieve a textbook outcome, while our model combining patient clinical characteristics and patient activity data achieved the highest performance with an AUROC curve of 0.7875. Conclusions Machine learning models outperformed ACS-NSQIP SRC estimates in predicting textbook outcomes after pancreatectomy. The highest performance was observed when machine learning models incorporated patient clinical characteristics and activity metrics.