Leveraging Clinical Data for Early Heart Disease Prediction: A Machine Learning Approach With Interpretability Analysis

Background: Heart disease remains one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, highlighting the need for early and accurate diagnosis to support effective prevention and treatment strategies. Methods: This study presents a machine-learning-based approach for predicting heart disease using clinical and demographic data from a publicly available dataset. Four widely used classification algorithms-Logistic Regression, Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Decision Trees-were evaluated to identify the most effective predictive model. The dataset underwent comprehensive preprocessing, including handling missing values, categorical encoding, and feature normalization, to enhance data quality and model robustness. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, precision, recall, and AUC-ROC metrics. Results: Findings show that hyperparameter-optimized models, particularly Random Forest and KNN, demonstrated strong predictive performance. Explainability techniques, specifically SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), were incorporated to improve interpretability, transparency, and clinical trust. SHAP values were used to analyze feature importance and provide explanations for individual predictions. Conclusion: The results underscore the potential of interpretable machine-learning models as valuable tools for early diagnosis, risk stratification, and clinical decision support. Future research should employ larger datasets and investigate real-time predictive applications further to enhance the generalizability and clinical utility of these models.