Stepping Up the Personalized Approach in COPD with Machine Learning

Introduction: There is increasing interest in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in all fields of medicine to facilitate greater personalisation of management. Methods: ML could be the next step of personalized medicine in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by giving the exact risk (risk for exacerbation, death, etc.) of every patient (based on his/her parameters like lung function, clinical data, demographics, previous exacerbations, etc.), thus providing a prognosis/risk for the specific patient based on individual characteristics (individual approach). Result: ML algorithm might utilise some traditional risk factors along with some others that may be location-specific (e.g. the risk of exacerbation thatmay be related to ambient pollution but that could vary massively between different countries, or between different regions of a particular country). Conclusion: This is a step forward from the commonly used assignment of patients to a specific group for which prognosis/risk data are available (group approach).