The roles of machine learning methods in limiting the spread of deadly diseases: A systematic review

Machine learning (ML) methods can be leveraged to prevent the spread of deadly infectious disease outbreak (e.g., COVID-19). This can be done by applying machine learning methods in predicting and detecting the deadly infectious disease. Most reviews did not discuss about the machine learning algorithms, datasets and performance measurements used for various applications in predicting and detecting the deadly infectious disease. In contrast, this paper outlines the literature review based on two major ways (e.g., prediction, detection) to limit the spread of deadly disease outbreaks. Hence, this study aims to investigate the state of the art, challenges and future works of leveraging ML methods to detect and predict deadly disease outbreaks according to two categories mentioned earlier. Specifically, this study provides a review on various approaches (e.g., individual and ensemble models), types of datasets, parameters or variables and performance measures used in the previous works. The literature review included all articles from journals and conference proceedings published from 2010 through 2020 in Scopus indexed databases using the search terms Predicting Disease Outbreaks and/or Detecting Disease using Machine Learning. The findings from this review focus on commonly used machine learning approaches, challenges and future works to limit the spread of deadly disease outbreaks through preventions and detections.