Forecasting hospital discharges for respiratory conditions in Costa Rica using climate and pollution data

Respiratory diseases represent one of the most significant economic burdens on healthcare systems worldwide. The variation in the increasing number of cases depends greatly on climatic seasonal effects, socioeconomic factors, and pollution. Therefore, understanding these variations and obtaining precise forecasts allows health authorities to make correct decisions regarding the allocation of limited economic and human resources. This study aims to model and forecast weekly hospitalizations due to respiratory conditions in seven regional hospitals in Costa Rica using four statistical learning techniques (Random Forest, XGboost, Facebook's Prophet forecasting model, and an ensemble method combining the above methods), along with 22 climate change indices and aerosol optical depth as an indicator of pollution. Models are trained using data from 2000 to 2018 and are evaluated using data from 2019 as testing data. Reliable predictions are obtained for each of the seven regional hospitals