High dropout and attrition rates among students and employees present critical challenges for educational institutions and corporations, with significant financial and social implications. Traditional machine learning approaches often struggle with imbalanced, high-dimensional data and frequently lack the interpretability necessary for actionable decision-making. This paper presents a comprehensive empirical comparison of hybrid quantum–classical machine learning models against state-of-the-art classical methods for dropout prediction across two distinct real-world domains: academic student performance and corporate employee attrition. We implement a Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) in PennyLane and benchmark it against Random Forest, XGBoost, and BiLSTM-CNN using identical preprocessing protocols on academic (480 samples) and corporate (1,470 samples) datasets. Results demonstrate problem-dependent quantum advantage: BiLSTM-CNN achieves highest performance on student data (F1: 0.81 vs. VQC’s 0.75), while the tuned VQC outperforms classical methods on employee data (F1: 0.51 vs. BiLSTM-CNN’s 0.48). Integration of SHAP-based explainability enables transparent feature attribution and personalized intervention generation. This work contributes the first systematic empirical benchmark of quantum machine learning for dropout prediction and demonstrates that quantum advantage in the NISQ era is highly problem-dependent rather than universal.
High dropout and attrition rates among students and employees present critical challenges for educational institutions and corporations, with significant financial and social implications. Traditional machine learning approaches often struggle with imbalanced, high-dimensional data and frequently lack the interpretability necessary for actionable decision-making. This paper presents a comprehensive empirical comparison of hybrid quantum–classical machine learning models against state-of-the-art classical methods for dropout prediction across two distinct real-world domains: academic student performance and corporate employee attrition. We implement a Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) in PennyLane and benchmark it against Random Forest, XGBoost, and BiLSTM-CNN using identical preprocessing protocols on academic (480 samples) and corporate (1,470 samples) datasets. Results demonstrate problem-dependent quantum advantage: BiLSTM-CNN achieves highest performance on student data (F1: 0.81 vs. VQC’s 0.75), while the tuned VQC outperforms classical methods on employee data (F1: 0.51 vs. BiLSTM-CNN’s 0.48). Integration of SHAP-based explainability enables transparent feature attribution and personalized intervention generation. This work contributes the first systematic empirical benchmark of quantum machine learning for dropout prediction and demonstrates that quantum advantage in the NISQ era is highly problem-dependent rather than universal.
Abstract Heart disease remains to be a primary cause of death globally, requiring precise and timely predictive methodologies. Traditional machine learning methods that depend exclusively on classical clinical variables frequently have restricted predictive accuracy and do not adequately use the intricate nonlinear interactions present in patient data. This work examines the effectiveness of hybrid quantum-classical models for predicting heart disease by combining classical clinical data with quantum-derived representations via Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC), Estimator, and Sampler models. Twelve hybrid configurations, integrating three quantum feature maps (Z, ZZ, Pauli) with four ansatz architectures (RealAmplitudes, TwoLocal, EfficientSU2, PauliTwoDesign), were assessed inside the PennyLane and Qiskit frameworks. The results indicate that the VQC model in PennyLane reached optimal performance with Z–TwoLocal and ZZ–PauliTwoDesign configurations, achieving accuracy and F1-scores of up to 0.95. The Estimator model consistently produced reliable predictions, with Pauli–EfficientSU2 and Z–TwoLocal attaining accuracies of up to 0.91 and F1-scores of 0.92 across several frameworks. The Sampler model demonstrated 1reasonable performance, with the Pauli–EfficientSU2 configuration achieving an accuracy of 0.65 and an F1-score of 0.73, underscoring the supplementary role of stochastic quantum sampling. The analysis of feature significance indicated that the quantum-derived feature provided the most robust predictive signal, exceeding classical variables like Age, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol. These findings demonstrate that meticulous alignment of feature maps and ansatz circuits is essential for optimizing model expressivity, convergence, and predictive effectiveness. In summary, hybrid quantum-classical models, especially the Estimator and VQC architectures, significantly improve heart disease prediction, providing a feasible method for precision clinical decision support and potential incorporation into privacy-preserving, multi-institutional healthcare systems.
Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of mortality globally, necessitating accurate diagnostic tools for early detection and intervention. This paper presents a comprehensive comparative and hybrid analysis of quantum and classical machine learning models for heart disease prediction using the UCI Cleveland dataset. We implement classical baseline models including Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and XGBoost, alongside quantum models: Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) with statevector fidelity kernels, Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) with data-reuploading ansätze, and Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks (QCNN) with parametric pooling. The primary contribution is the development of a hybrid quantum classical ensemble meta-classifier that fuses predictions from all classical and quantum learners using XGBoost as a meta learner. Experiments conducted in Google Colab using Qiskit 1.2+ and Penny Lane 0.36+ demonstrate that the proposed hybrid ensemble achieves superior performance with 98.33accuracy, 100perfect AUC-ROC of 1.0, substantially outperforming standalone classical models (best: 88.33(best: 80hybrid model’s superiority. These results underscore the potential of quantum feature spaces combined with classical decision boundaries in healthcare prediction systems, and demonstrate the immediate utility of hybrid quantum-classical integration in medical diagnostics on near-term quantum hardware.
Background: The emergent need for scalable artificial intelligence (AI) models emphasizes the shortcomings of traditional machine learning in dealing with big, complicated datasets owing to computation and energy limitations. Objective: The architecture takes advantage of quantum encoding methods like amplitude and angle encoding for compact feature representation, with classical preprocessing providing compatibility and stability. Methods: To overcome these issues, this research introduces a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Machine Learning (HQML) framework that combines Quantum Variational Classifiers (QVCs) and Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks (QCNNs) with classical deep learning layers. Results: Experiments were performed on pre-curated datasets taken from the Scikit Machine Learning Repository, with hybrid models compared to classical Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The implementation was done with PennyLane using TensorFlow Quantum for compatibility with noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) machines. The comparative analysis identified that the suggested HQML model achieves significant performance gains, as classification accuracy increased from 73 percent in the baseline classical CNN to 98% in the hybrid model. Precision also went up from 77 to 96 percent, recall from 81 to 100 percent, and F1-score from 79 to 98 percent. These findings confirm the ability of the model to leverage quantum benefits for extracting complicated data distributions without losing stability through classical components. The findings confirm the viability of HQML to real-world finance, healthcare, and intelligent automation applications where scalability and precision matter. Conclusion: This research establishes that quantum-classical integration not only minimizes training overhead but also attains near-perfect classification efficiency with constrained qubit resources. The research aids in filling the gap between theoretical quantum potential and deployable practical AI, opening the door for next-generation quantum-boosted intelligence.
Purpose This study investigates the integration of quantum-enhanced machine learning (QML) into medical image analysis, focusing on classification and feature extraction tasks. It aims to evaluate whether hybrid quantum-classical models can overcome the limitations of traditional machine learning in handling high-dimensional, clinically relevant imaging data. Design/methodology/approach Hybrid architectures combining classical preprocessing with quantum components, specifically variational quantum circuits (VQCs) and quantum kernel methods, were developed and implemented in simulated quantum environments using Qiskit and PennyLane on Google Colab. Publicly available datasets (ChestX-ray14, Brain Tumor MRI and CT Hemorrhage) were preprocessed and encoded into quantum states. Model performance was evaluated against classical baselines (MLP and CNN) using accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, convergence speed and trainable parameters. Findings Quantum-enhanced models achieved competitive or superior performance compared to classical models with significantly fewer trainable parameters and faster convergence. The Quantum Kernel SVM demonstrated the highest precision (89.1%) and F1-score (88.5%) using only 8 parameters, while VQC models converged up to 2× faster than classical baselines. These results highlight the potential of QML to improve efficiency, robustness and scalability in diagnostic imaging workflows, particularly in resource-constrained or data-limited settings. Research limitations/implications The study relies on simulated quantum environments, which do not capture hardware noise or qubit limitations. Future work will extend to real quantum devices, multimodal data integration and interpretability strategies. Practical implications Quantum kernel methods and lightweight VQC architectures enable faster, resource-efficient diagnostic modeling, making them suitable for clinical environments with limited computational capacity or time-sensitive decision-making needs. Social implications Improving the efficiency and accessibility of medical image analysis has the potential to support faster diagnosis and enhance healthcare delivery, particularly in underserved or resource-limited regions. Originality/value This study provides a practical evaluation of hybrid quantum-classical models applied to multiple real medical imaging datasets in a reproducible simulated environment. It offers an early-stage framework demonstrating how QML techniques can be integrated into existing machine learning pipelines for medical image analysis.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting millions worldwide, where early and accurate diagnosis plays a critical role in improving patient outcomes. While classical machine learning methods have shown strong performance in PD classification using clinical and acoustic data, they remain limited in capturing complex nonlinear feature interactions in high-dimensional spaces. This study explores the application of quantum machine learning (QML) techniques for PD prediction, focusing on Variational Quantum Classifiers (VQC) and Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM), and compares their performance with strong classical baselines including Logistic Regression, SVM, Random Forest, Grid Search–optimized models, and XGBoost. Experiments were conducted using stratified train–test splits and validated through cross-validation and statistical testing. Results show that classical models achieve competitive performance, with XGBoost reaching 91.9% accuracy. However, quantum models demonstrate slightly improved performance, with the VQC using EfficientSU2 achieving the highest accuracy of 93.1%, followed by the Real Amplitudes VQC (92.6%) and QSVM (92.2%). These improvements are consistent across evaluation metrics including F1-score and recall. Statistical analysis using 10-fold cross-validation indicates that the VQC (EfficientSU2) shows a significant improvement over classical baselines ( p = 0.031), while other quantum models do not achieve statistical significance over XGBoost ( p > 0.05). McNemar’s test on the independent test set confirms no significant difference in final prediction distributions between quantum and classical models. Overall, the findings suggest that quantum machine learning models are competitive with state-of-the-art classical approaches, offering marginal but consistent performance gains. This study highlights the potential of quantum-enhanced learning frameworks for biomedical classification tasks, while also emphasizing that their advantages remain incremental rather than definitive under current simulation-based implementations.
Early and accurate prediction of cardiovascular disease is essential to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. This research presents a hybrid classical–quantum machine learning framework for heart disease prediction using the Cleveland dataset. The proposed pipeline integrates advanced feature engineering, bio-inspired optimization, and quantum-inspired learning to improve classification performance and interpretability. The system applies multiple feature selection techniques followed by a hybrid feature fusion strategy. Orthogonal Component Analysis is then used for dimensionality transformation, while quantum-inspired feature mapping simulates quantum state coding. A feature selection mechanism based on a Genetic Algorithm optimizes the subset of features. Classical and quantum machine learning models are evaluated, including Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, K-Nearest Neighbors, Logistic Regression, Quantum Support Vector Classifier, Variational Quantum Classifier, Quantum KNN, and Quantum Neural Networks. Model performance is evaluated using accuracy metrics. To ensure transparency and trustworthiness, explainable AI techniques such as SHAP, LIME and DiCE are integrated to provide local and global interpretability of predictions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid framework improves predictive performance by achieving 90% accuracy compared to traditional machine learning approaches, while maintaining model explainability. The model achieved an overall accuracy of 90%, indicating strong predictive capability in cardiovascular disease risk classification. A detailed analysis of class-wise performance shows that for Class 0, the model obtained a precision of 0.85, a recall of 0.97, and an F1-score of 0.90, demonstrating excellent ability to correctly identify negative cases with minimal false negatives. For Class 1, the model achieved a precision of 0.96, a recall of 0.84, and an F1-score of 0.90, indicating high confidence in positive predictions, though with slightly lower recall compared to Class 0. This study highlights the potential of combining classical feature engineering, evolutionary optimization and quantum-inspired learning for next-generation medical decision support systems. The integration of quantum-inspired techniques also provides a promising direction for improving computational efficiency and model robustness in healthcare analytics. The findings suggest that hybrid classical–quantum learning approaches can support clinicians in making faster and more reliable diagnostic decisions.