Building interpretable models for polypharmacy prediction in older chronic patients based on drug prescription records

Background Multimorbidity presents an increasingly common problem in older population, and is tightly related to polypharmacy, i.e., concurrent use of multiple medications by one individual. Detecting polypharmacy from drug prescription records is not only related to multimorbidity, but can also point at incorrect use of medicines. In this work, we build models for predicting polypharmacy from drug prescription records for newly diagnosed chronic patients. We evaluate the models’ performance with a strong focus on interpretability of the results.