Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning

Data imbalance is one of the major challenges in health insurance fraud detection where the distribution of classes within the dataset is significantly skewed, leading statistical models to be biased toward the dominant class. The algorithmic approaches to handling imbalance involve modification to...

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Main Authors: Supriya Seshagiri, K. V. Prema
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10858064/
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author Supriya Seshagiri
K. V. Prema
author_facet Supriya Seshagiri
K. V. Prema
author_sort Supriya Seshagiri
collection DOAJ
description Data imbalance is one of the major challenges in health insurance fraud detection where the distribution of classes within the dataset is significantly skewed, leading statistical models to be biased toward the dominant class. The algorithmic approaches to handling imbalance involve modification to the loss functions to sensitize them to the minor class. Our research focuses on the efficiency of meta-models in addressing imbalance and introduces Meta-reinforcement learning (Meta-RL) as a novel solution for learning under imbalance. Meta-RL leverages meta-learning principles to learn the characteristics of fraudulent instances dynamically. This adaptability comes from its ability to learn shared representations and optimal task-specific strategies using limited samples. By using task distribution and reward shaping, our experiments on Meta-RL algorithms, RL<sup>2</sup>, and VariBAD achieve superior sample efficiency and adaptability for varying degrees of imbalance. The efficiency of the models is measured using imbalance-safe metrics like Geometric mean, Harmonic mean, and Mathew&#x2019;s Correlation Coefficient (MCC), and metrics like Cohen&#x2019;s Kappa score are used to gauge the consistency of the results. This research is the first to apply Meta-RL to the problem of data imbalance in fraud detection, contributing to a generalizable and efficient framework for imbalanced learning. The findings of this research show that Meta-RL algorithms can be effectively tuned to handle data imbalance without modification to their objective functions and hence, can be considered an appropriate option for health insurance fraud detection solutions.
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spelling doaj-art-67ab6eeaf329416aa5ccc347251c91d22025-02-11T00:01:38ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-0113234822349710.1109/ACCESS.2025.353647910858064Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement LearningSupriya Seshagiri0https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2365-5702K. V. Prema1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8847-0749Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, IndiaDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, IndiaData imbalance is one of the major challenges in health insurance fraud detection where the distribution of classes within the dataset is significantly skewed, leading statistical models to be biased toward the dominant class. The algorithmic approaches to handling imbalance involve modification to the loss functions to sensitize them to the minor class. Our research focuses on the efficiency of meta-models in addressing imbalance and introduces Meta-reinforcement learning (Meta-RL) as a novel solution for learning under imbalance. Meta-RL leverages meta-learning principles to learn the characteristics of fraudulent instances dynamically. This adaptability comes from its ability to learn shared representations and optimal task-specific strategies using limited samples. By using task distribution and reward shaping, our experiments on Meta-RL algorithms, RL<sup>2</sup>, and VariBAD achieve superior sample efficiency and adaptability for varying degrees of imbalance. The efficiency of the models is measured using imbalance-safe metrics like Geometric mean, Harmonic mean, and Mathew&#x2019;s Correlation Coefficient (MCC), and metrics like Cohen&#x2019;s Kappa score are used to gauge the consistency of the results. This research is the first to apply Meta-RL to the problem of data imbalance in fraud detection, contributing to a generalizable and efficient framework for imbalanced learning. The findings of this research show that Meta-RL algorithms can be effectively tuned to handle data imbalance without modification to their objective functions and hence, can be considered an appropriate option for health insurance fraud detection solutions.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10858064/Data imbalancehealth insurancemeta-learningmeta-reinforcement learning
spellingShingle Supriya Seshagiri
K. V. Prema
Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning
IEEE Access
Data imbalance
health insurance
meta-learning
meta-reinforcement learning
title Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning
title_full Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning
title_fullStr Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning
title_full_unstemmed Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning
title_short Efficient Handling of Data Imbalance in Health Insurance Fraud Detection Using Meta-Reinforcement Learning
title_sort efficient handling of data imbalance in health insurance fraud detection using meta reinforcement learning
topic Data imbalance
health insurance
meta-learning
meta-reinforcement learning
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10858064/
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AT kvprema efficienthandlingofdataimbalanceinhealthinsurancefrauddetectionusingmetareinforcementlearning