Neonatal mortality prediction with routinely collected data: a machine learning approach.

Background: Recent decreases in neonatal mortality have been slower than expected for most countries. This study aims to predict the risk of neonatal mortality using only data routinely available from birth records in the largest city of the Americas.

Methods: A probabilistic linkage of every birth record occurring in the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, between 2012 e 2017 was performed with the death records from 2012 to 2018 (1,202,843 births and 447,687 deaths), and a total of 7282 neonatal deaths were identified (a neonatal mortality rate of 6.