eVision: Forecasting the spread of Tuberculosis in India with Deep Learning

Humanity has battled tuberculosis for all of recorded history. Some studies estimate that Mycobacterium tuberculosis may have been around as long as 3 million years but it was only in 1834 when Johann Schonlein officially presented the characteristics of it. Even though the TB epidemic has touched all corners of the world, Africa and Asia are the regions that currently suffer the worst consequences. The purpose of this study is to construct a model within the eVision forecasting environment, capable of forecasting the trend of Tuberculosis cases in India, as India is the country that accounts for the largest percentage of TB cases and deaths worldwide. And being able to make predictions for India may also lead to successful results for other regions in Asia and Africa. In order to do so, this study presents different test cases that show the effectiveness of the model, varying the number of steps for each one of the data sets created. It's important to note, that these data sets are combinations of data gathered from the states with the most TB cases in India in the last years, as well as the total data for India, and supplemental data from Google Trends, as a way to facilitate the machine learning model. Even though the final results were respectable compared to past research done on India and other countries, the model nevertheless has a limitation on the number of weeks ahead which the predictions are still considered to be good; with 7 weeks being the optimal result.