Patent ID: 7725329

Claim:
A method for predicting a person's future health status, comprising: a. establishing a hierarchical tree network that, for a plurality of members, assigns each member to at most only one of a plurality of nodes as a function of a plurality of stratification variables; b. providing to a computer based system, for said plurality of members and for each said member, member demographic data, available member medical claim data, and available member pharmacy claim data; c. a computer performing feature selection for each of said plurality of nodes to identify for each said node an optimal subset of features from a set comprising at least some of said member demographic data, said available member medical claim data, and said available member pharmacy claim data for all members assigned to that said node; d. a computer training a MVLR algorithm and a BRN algorithm using at least some of said member demographic data, said available member medical claim data, and said available member pharmacy claim data and storing learned parameters in a database to create a learned parameter database; e. using the learned parameter database and, for at least one said member, using that at least one said member's member demographic data, said available member medical claim data, and said available member pharmacy claim data, a computer calculating a MVLR future health status score using said MVLR algorithm and calculating a BRN future health status score using said BRN algorithm, and calculating an arithmetic mean of said MVLR future health status score and said BRN future health status score to determine a final score.