A reinforcement learning approach for individualizing erythropoietin dosages in hemodialysis patients

This paper presents a reinforcement learning (RL) approach for anemia management in patients undergoing chronic renal failure. Erythropoietin (EPO) is the treatment of choice for this kind of anemia but it is an expensive drug and with some dangerous side-effects that should be considered especially for patients who do not respond to the treatment. Therefore, an individualized treatment appears to be necessary. RL is a suitable approach to tackle this problem. Moreover, resulting policies are similar to medical protocols, and hence, they can easily be transferred to daily practice. A cohort of 64 patients are included in the study. An implementation of the Q-learning algorithm based on a st…