Enhanced forecasting of emergency department patient arrivals using feature engineering approach and machine learning

Table 2 Predictors and outcome variable

Feature type	Variable name	Description	Variable type
Calendar data	Day of the week	Day of week in which the patient arrived at the ED. The categorical variable was deployed into seven dummy variables, each indicating a day of the week	Binary
	Month of the year	Month of the year in which the patient arrived at the ED. The categorical variable was deployed into twelve dummy variables, each indicating a month of the year	Binary
Meteorological data	Minimum daily temperature	Minimum temperature (in Celsius) of the arrival day	Continuous
	Mean daily temperature	Mean temperature (in Celsius) of the arrival day	Continuous
	Maximum daily temperature	Maximum temperature (in Celsius) of the arrival day	Continuous
Daily patient arrivals at the ED	Arrivals	Total number of daily patient arrivals at the ED	Discrete

ISSN: 1472-6947