Applying Concept Drift to Understand Hepatitis Evolution in Brazil

Abstract

In this manuscript, we performed a scrutiny on hepatitis records collected in Brazil using statistical and computational tools aiming at analyzing the evolution of this disease during the period of 2007 and 2014. The study was performed in three phases. Initially, we used statistical tests to assess whether or not the notification cases were increasing. Then, we created a measure to quantify trends, without being affected by scale, thus allowing to compare the occurrence of hepatitis in different regions in Brazil. Finally, we used concept drift to detect the changing point when the notification behavior has changed over time. As a consequence of this study, public policies can be developed to deal with the increasing number of cases, specially by considering sexual transmissions.

Keywords:

• Data streams
• time series analysis
• hepatitis

Notes

1 For more information (in Portuguese): http://portalsinan.saude.gov.br/

2 DATASUS stands for Computing Department of Brazilian health care system. For more information (in Portuguese): http://www.datasus.gov.br/