Development of a Machine Learning Based Web Application for Early Diagnosis of COVID-19 Based on Symptoms

Detecting the presence of a disease requires laboratory tests, testing kits, and devices; however, these were not always available on hand. This study proposes a new approach in disease detection using machine learning algorithms by analyzing symptoms experienced by a person without requiring labora...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Charlyn Nayve Villavicencio, Julio Jerison Macrohon, Xavier Alphonse Inbaraj, Jyh-Horng Jeng, Jer-Guang Hsieh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-03-01
Series:Diagnostics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/12/4/821
Description
Summary:Detecting the presence of a disease requires laboratory tests, testing kits, and devices; however, these were not always available on hand. This study proposes a new approach in disease detection using machine learning algorithms by analyzing symptoms experienced by a person without requiring laboratory tests. Six supervised machine learning algorithms such as J48 decision tree, random forest, support vector machine, k-nearest neighbors, naïve Bayes algorithms, and artificial neural networks were applied in the “COVID-19 Symptoms and Presence Dataset” from Kaggle. Through hyperparameter optimization and 10-fold cross validation, we attained the highest possible performance of each algorithm. A comparative analysis was performed according to accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the ROC curve. Results show that random forest, support vector machine, k-nearest neighbors, and artificial neural networks outweighed other algorithms by attaining 98.84% accuracy, 100% sensitivity, 98.79% specificity, and 98.84% area under the ROC curve. Finally, we developed a web application that will allow users to select symptoms currently being experienced, and use it to predict the presence of COVID-19 through the developed prediction model. Based on this mechanism, the proposed method can effectively predict the presence or absence of COVID-19 in a person immediately without using laboratory tests, kits, and devices in a real-time manner.
ISSN:2075-4418