Is Your Training Pipeline Production-Ready? A Case Study in the Healthcare Domain

Deploying a Machine Learning (ML) training pipeline into production requires robust software engineering practices. This differs significantly from experimental workflows. This experience report investigates this challenge in SPIRA, a project whose goal is to create an ML-Enabled System (MLES) to pre-diagnose insufficiency respiratory via speech analysis. The first version of SPIRA's training pipeline lacked critical software quality attributes. This paper presents an overview of the MLES, then compares three versions of the architecture of the Continuous Training subsystem, which evolved from a Big Ball of Mud, to a Modular Monolith, towards Microservices. By adopting different design principles and patterns to enhance its maintainability, robustness, and extensibility. In this way, the paper seeks to offer insights for both ML Engineers tasked to productionize ML training pipelines and Data Scientists seeking to adopt MLOps practices.

Leveraging XP and CRISP-DM for Agile Data Science Projects

This study explores the integration of eXtreme Programming (XP) and the Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) in agile Data Science projects. We conducted a case study at the e-commerce company Elo7 to answer the research question: How can the agility of the XP method be integrated with CRISP-DM in Data Science projects? Data was collected through interviews and questionnaires with a Data Science team consisting of data scientists, ML engineers, and data product managers. The results show that 86% of the team frequently or always applies CRISP-DM, while 71% adopt XP practices in their projects. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that it is possible to combine CRISP-DM with XP in Data Science projects, providing a structured and collaborative approach. Finally, the study generated improvement recommendations for the company.

Discriminant audio properties in deep learning based respiratory insufficiency detection in Brazilian Portuguese

This work investigates Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that detect respiratory insufficiency (RI) by analyzing speech audios, thus treating speech as a RI biomarker. Previous works collected RI data (P1) from COVID-19 patients during the first phase of the pandemic and trained modern AI models, such as CNNs and Transformers, which achieved $96.5\%$ accuracy, showing the feasibility of RI detection via AI. Here, we collect RI patient data (P2) with several causes besides COVID-19, aiming at extending AI-based RI detection. We also collected control data from hospital patients without RI. We show that the considered models, when trained on P1, do not generalize to P2, indicating that COVID-19 RI has features that may not be found in all RI types.