PROTOTYPING OF A WEB BASED EXPERT SYSTEM FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF HEART FAILURE

Abstract

The heart is a key organ of the human system that pumps and circulates blood throughout the body. The failure of the heart often leads to total breakdown of the entire body system which in most cases results in death. A significant number of heart failure patient have been reported dead due to inaccurate and untimely diagnosis. Information Technology has proved its strength in the provision of effective and efficient solutions in diverse fields of human endeavor. This research proposes a Web Based Fuzzy Expert System for the diagnosis of heart failure. The proposed system consists of a Knowledge Base, which is made up of a Database and a Fuzzy Logic component, a Fuzzy Inference Engine, and a Decision Support Engine composed of cognitive filter, emotional filter, and Tele-medicine facilities. The system was implemented using Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), JavaScript and Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) programming languages with My Structured Query Language (MySQL) as the Database Management System. Data of heart failure patients were collected from the State Specialist Hospital, Akure and used to test the functionalities of the proposed system. Standard statistical metrics were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed system and the results of the evaluation shows that the system is efficient in the diagnosis and management of heart failure disease.