Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Chronic diseases have become one of the main causes of premature death all around the world in recent years. The diagnosis of chronic diseases is time-consuming and costly. Therefore, timely diagnosis and prediction of chronic diseases are very necessary. METHODS: In this paper, a new method for chronic disease diagnosis is proposed by combining convolutional neural network (CNN) and ensemble learning. This method utilizes random forest (RF) as the base classifier to improve classification performance and diagnostic accuracy, and then combines AdaBoost to successfully replace the Softmax layer of CNN to generate multiple accurate base classifiers while determining their optimal attributes, achieving high-quality classification and prediction of chronic diseases. RESULTS: To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, real-world Electronic Medical Records dataset (C-EMRs) was used for experimental analysis. The results show that compared with other traditional machine learning methods such as CNN, K-Nearest Neighbor, and RF, the proposed method can effectively improve the accuracy of diagnosis and reduce the occurrence of missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: This study will provide effective information for the diagnosis of chronic diseases, assist doctors in making clinical decisions, develop targeted intervention measures, and reduce the probability of misdiagnosis.