Predicting surgery duration

A system for generating a predictive model for predicting a surgery duration, comprising:

• an input interface for accessing medical data, the medical data comprising records of surgeries, wherein a record is indicative of at least a type of surgery and a surgery duration;
• a processor subsystem configured to generate a predictive model for predicting the surgery duration by:
• using a feature selection technique to identify a set of features in training data, which set of features is predictive of the surgery duration, wherein the training data comprises a first part of the medical data;
• training a number of predictive models using the set of features in the training data as input and the surgery duration as prediction target, wherein the predictive models include at least a linear predictive model and a non-linear predictive model;
• using a second part of the medical data, evaluating a performance of each the predictive models in predicting the surgery duration, wherein the evaluating of the performance comprises using a performance metric which characterises a time difference between a predicted surgery duration and an actual surgery duration;
• based on the performance of the predictive models, generating an ensemble model which combines at least two of the predictive models;
• and
• outputting the ensemble model for use in predicting the surgery duration.