# XGBoost-Based Framework for Smoking-Induced Noncommunicable Disease Prediction

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new AI framework using XGBoost to predict smoking-related noncommunicable diseases in South Korea and the US, aiming to improve early diagnosis and prevention.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is an XGBoost-based framework with a hybrid feature selection method for interpretable SiNCD prediction.

## Key findings

- The proposed model outperforms existing baseline models in predicting smoking-induced noncommunicable diseases.
- The framework identifies important features to enhance model interpretability.
- The method is applied to data from South Korea and the United States for broader applicability.

## Abstract

Smoking-induced noncommunicable diseases (SiNCDs) have become a significant threat to public health and cause of death globally. In the last decade, numerous studies have been proposed using artificial intelligence techniques to predict the risk of developing SiNCDs. However, determining the most significant features and developing interpretable models are rather challenging in such systems. In this study, we propose an efficient extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) based framework incorporated with the hybrid feature selection (HFS) method for SiNCDs prediction among the general population in South Korea and the United States. Initially, HFS is performed in three stages: (I) significant features are selected by t-test and chi-square test; (II) multicollinearity analysis serves to obtain dissimilar features; (III) final selection of best representative features is done based on least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). Then, selected features are fed into the XGBoost predictive model. The experimental results show that our proposed model outperforms several existing baseline models. In addition, the proposed model also provides important features in order to enhance the interpretability of the SiNCDs prediction model. Consequently, the XGBoost based framework is expected to contribute for early diagnosis and prevention of the SiNCDs in public health concerns.