Clinical decision support system for quality of life among the elderly: an approach using artificial neural network

Due to advancements in medicine and the elderly population's growth with various disabilities, attention to QoL among this age group is crucial. Early prediction of the QoL among the elderly by multiple care providers leads to decreased physical and mental disorders and increased social and environmental participation among them by considering all factors affecting it. So far, it is not designed the prediction system for QoL in this regard. Therefore, this study aimed to develop the CDSS based on ANN as an ML technique by considering the physical, psychiatric, and social factors.

In this developmental and applied study, we investigated the 980 cases associated with pleasant and unpleasant elderlies QoL cases. We used the BLR and simple correlation coefficient methods to attain the essential factors affecting the QoL among the elderly. Then three BP configurations, including CF-BP, FF-BP, and E-BP, were compared to get the best model for predicting the QoL.

Based on the BLR, the 13 factors were considered the best factors affecting the elderly's QoL at P < 0.05. Comparing all ANN configurations showed that the CF-BP with the 13-16-1 structure with sensitivity = 0.95, specificity  =  0.97, accuracy = 0.96, F-Score = 0.96, PPV = 0.95, and NPV = 0.97 gained the best performance for QoL among the elderly.

The results of this study showed that the designed CDSS based on the CFBP could be considered an efficient tool for increasing the QoL among the elderly.