Stroke Expert System for Personalized Risk Prediction and Adviser: A Preliminary Study of Stroke Risk Factors

Abstract

World Stroke Organization states that one in six people worldwide will have stroke in their lifetime. Thousand studies about stroke are conducted in worldwide and its number is increasing every year. This means that health scientists still working on stroke and the knowledge about stroke (and its risk factors) is still developing. A project develops an expert system that has two objectives. First, to educate people about stroke by delivering their personalized stroke risk prediction. Further, this expert system will also provide some advice to reduce their risk based on the modifiable risk factors that they have. Second, the expert system aims to acquire and encode stroke risk factors knowledge as it develops. Thus, the risk prediction result is continuously updated based on the newest knowledge. This paper provides preliminary information about people knowledge about stroke. Do they know if stroke is the first leading cause of death in Indonesia? Do they know about the stroke risk factor? Do they know about how to reduce their stroke risk factor (if they have the risk)? What kind of electronic media do they want to get acknowledged about stroke? The expert system is offered as one option in the last question. From 259 individuals we draw the conclusion that 40% respondents aged from 15-75 do not know that stroke is the first leading cause of death in Indonesia. In average, the respondents only know three out of nine mentioned stroke risk factors. Those three are high level of cholesterol, related to heart disease, and age. 56% respondents do not know how to reduce the stroke risk factor, and they do want to know more about it. 63% respondents want an expert system to predict their stroke risk and give them more knowledge to reduce the stroke risk. From this result, we are confident that the expert system is wanted and can educate people more about the stroke risk factors, also, its personalized advisor can acknowledge them about how to reduce the risk.