MobDBTest: A machine learning based system for predicting diabetes risk using mobile devices

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is reaching possibly epidemic proportions in India. The degree of disease and destruction due to diabetes and its potential complications are enormous, and originated a significant health care burden on both households and society. The concerning factor is that diabetes is now being proven to be linked with a number of complications and to be occurring at a comparatively younger age in the country. In India, the migration of people from rural to urban areas and corresponding modification in lifestyle are all moving the degree of diabetes. Deficiency of knowledge about diabetes causes untimely death among the population at large. Therefore, acquiring a proficiency that should spread awareness about diabetes may affect the people in India. In this work, a mobile/android application based solution to overcome the deficiency of awareness about diabetes has been shown. The application uses novel machine learning techniques to predict diabetes levels for the users. At the same time, the system also provides knowledge about diabetes and some suggestions on the disease. A comparative analysis of four machine learning (ML) algorithms were performed. The Decision Tree (DT) classifier outperforms amongst the 4 ML algorithms. Hence, DT classifier is used to design the machinery for the mobile application for diabetes prediction using real world dataset collected from a reputed hospital in the Chhattisgarh state of India.