Text messaging-based medical diagnosis using natural language processing and fuzzy logic

Abstract

The use of natural language processing (NLP) methods and their application to developing conversational systems for health diagnosis increases patients' access to medical knowledge. In this study, a chatbot service was developed for the Covenant University Doctor (CUDoctor) telehealth system based on fuzzy logic rules and fuzzy inference. The service focuses on assessing the symptoms of tropical diseases in Nigeria. Telegram Bot Application Programming Interface (API) was used to create the interconnection between the chatbot and the system, while Twilio API was used for interconnectivity between the system and a short messaging service (SMS) subscriber. The service uses the knowledge base consisting of known facts on diseases and symptoms acquired from medical ontologies. A fuzzy support vector machine (SVM) is used to effectively predict the disease based on the symptoms inputted. The inputs of the users are recognized by NLP and are forwarded to the CUDoctor for decision support. Finally, a notification message displaying the end of the diagnosis process is sent to the user. The result is a medical diagnosis system which provides a personalized diagnosis utilizing self-input from users to effectively diagnose diseases. The usability of the developed system was evaluated using the system usability scale (SUS), yielding a mean SUS score of 80.4, which indicates the overall positive evaluation.