Use of the Internet in Medical Decision-Making: a Model Developed for Diabetes Prediction

Abstract

The Internet has become an important source of information for physicians seeking immediate data for the management of patients and for those developing decision-making methodologies and guidelines for clinical practice. In this study; components and subsystems of a medical decision support system are presented. An artificial neural network model, which is one of the subsystems of the differential diagnosis component, has been proposed as a. reasoning tool to support medical diagnosis. The input data of artificial neural network models used in different medical diagnosis can be obtained via the Internet. The present study is concerned with the application of artificial neural network model to diabetes prediction. Demographic and medical data of diabetics and non-diabetics obtained via the Internet were used as the artificial neural network inputs. The accuracy of the neural network's results has shown that the diabetes prediction is feasible by the neural network described in this study.