6.2 Data Mining Pilot Study
6.2.7. Deployment
The current DM study reveals 25 deployable association rules (see Table 6.9).
Table 6.9. Summary of deployable new associations discovered from our survey Rule
No Complications Gender Marital status
Education level Employment status Diabetes type 1 Identifying the right medication
dosage. Male Married - Employed Type2
2 Undertaking any physical
activity. Male Married - Employed Type2
3 Remembering when to take
medication. Male Married - - Type2
4 Identifying the right medication
dosage. Male Married - Employed -
5 Undertaking any physical
activity. Male Married
Bachelor
degree Employed - 6 Identifying the right medication. Male Married - Employed - 7 Identifying the right medication. Male Married - Employed Type2 8 Remembering when to take
medication. Male Married - Employed -
9 Identifying the right medication
amount in Ramadan. Male Married
Bachelor
degree Employed - 10 Identifying the right medication
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No Complications Gender Marital status
Education level Employment status Diabetes type 11 Identifying the right medication
dosage. Male Married - - Type2
12 Identifying the right medication. Male Married Bachelor
degree Employed - 13 Identifying the right medication
amount in Ramadan. Male Married - Employed Type2 14 Identifying the right medication
amount in Ramadan. Male Married - Employed -
15 Identifying the diet appropriate
to the health condition. Female -
High school
or below Unemployed Type1 16 Coexisting with aspects of
diabetes lifestyle. Female -
High school
or below Unemployed Type1 17 Identifying the right medication
amount in Ramadan. Female Single - Unemployed Type1 18 Identifying the diet appropriate
to the health condition. Male Married - Employed Type2 19 Undertaking any physical
activity. Male Married - - Type2
20 Identifying the right medication. Male Married - - Type2 21 Identifying the right medication
time in Ramadan. Female -
High school
or below Unemployed Type1 22 Identifying the right diet in
Ramadan. Female -
High school
or below Unemployed Type1 23 Identifying right medication
amount in Ramadan. Female -
High school
or below Unemployed - 24 Identifying the right medication
amount in Ramadan. Male Married - - Type2
25 Identifying the right medication. Male Married Bachelor
degree - -
These health-related complications can be overcome by setting up a forum for diabetic citizens and providing them with tips, policies, strategies, guidelines and best practices related to their illness. Such a forum can be tailored to the profile information associated with each encountered complications resulting from the current study. The forum can also be used by healthcare professionals to support their patients. This can be achieved through the four SECI model modes of socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation.
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Socialisation is the first mode in the SECI model, and it is responsible for the dissemination of tacit knowledge among different individuals. Diabetic citizens in Saudi Arabia can socialise with other diabetics who match their diabetes type and profile information. This can enable those diabetic citizens to overcome different non-health-related complications through the observation of best practice performed by other diabetic individuals. The complication of remembering when to take medication encountered by males with type 2 diabetes mellitus can be overcome through the observation of other diabetic citizens who have the same diabetes type to capture best practices related to medication reminders. The complication of undertaking physical activity can be overcome by carrying out physical activities tailored to specific gender, employment status and diabetes type.
The externalisation mode can be applied to facilitate conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge among different individuals. The complication of identifying the right
medication dosage can be overcome through publication of medication guidelines from
healthcare professionals to diabetic citizens with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The other complication that can be overcome through externalisation is the difficulty in identifying the
right medication. Healthcare professionals can publish strategies to assist citizens with type
2 diabetes mellitus to identify their appropriate medication.
The combination mode helps integrate different explicit knowledge to produce a new knowledge in an explicit form. The complications of identifying the right medication time in
Ramadan, faced by citizens with type 1 diabetes mellitus, identifying the right medication amount in Ramadan, encountered by citizens with type1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus, and identifying the appropriate diet in Ramadan, encountered by citizens with type 1 diabetes
mellitus, can be overcome through the dissemination of different explicit strategies in relation to how to deal with diabetes in the holy month of Ramadan. While these strategies are useful in dealing with such complications, it is important that these strategies are produced by healthcare professionals and healthcare service providers to ensure their effectiveness. Moreover, the complication of coexisting with aspects of diabetes lifestyle can be overcome through the combination mode by delivering relevant policies from healthcare professionals to females with type 1 diabetes mellitus.
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The internalisation mode helps execute the conversion of knowledge from explicit into tacit through “learning by doing”. Several complications can be overcome through the conversion of different best practices and guidelines from its explicit form into a tacit form. For example, the complication of identifying the diet appropriate to the health condition encountered by females with type 2 diabetes mellitus can be overcome through the conversion of best practices related to diet suitable to type 2 diabetes. Similarly, the complication of undertaking
any physical activity can be overcome through the provision of training and exercising best
practices suited to individuals who have type 2 diabetes mellitus, and those individuals can acquire these best practices through “learning by doing”.
In order to facilitate the creation and sharing of the above knowledge, a knowledge web portal is designed and developed to support diabetics in Saudi Arabia from a knowledge management perspective. Various web tools can support the implementation of the sharing and dissemination of tacit and explicit knowledge related to diabetic citizens. These are tools, forums, blogs, social media and frequently asked questions (FAQ), which can be included in the web portal to provide an effective knowledge creation and sharing forum (see Figure 6.5). A literature review on the web tools that support the SECI model is presented in Chapter Seven.
Figure 6.5. Web tools to support the SECI model Source: (Natek, 2016)
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The deployed results will also be closely monitored and maintained. The designed knowledge portal contains an optional survey to gather more information about encountered complications and profile information from visitors who are Saudi Arabian diabetics. The gathered data will be mined in periodical bases in order to extract useful associations of non- health-related complications and profile characteristics, and to update trends related to the current study. As mining forthcoming data may result in different association rules, solutions to be provided over the web portal may also vary for the purpose of addressing new complications and their associated profile information. Furthermore, all gathered data will be freely available to visitors and researchers who may look for such sources. The provision of the obtained data will overcome the difficulty we confronted regarding data gathering in the early stages of our study. This will help conduct future studies relevant to diabetes mellitus, thus providing a rich environment for management of diabetes and future studies.
6.3 Conclusion
This chapter highlights the contribution of DM to support knowledge management. The focus of DM in this thesis is concerned with discovering associations between non-health-related complications and the associated profile information of diabetic citizens in Saudi Arabia. Twenty-five extracted rules associate nine complications with different characteristics of diabetic citizens in the kingdom. These associations can help diabetic citizens cope with complications related to illness. They can contribute to the SECI model to provide effective dissemination and sharing of best practices and guidelines for diabetic citizens in the kingdom. The utilisation of such a model provides useful means for facilitating e-health to support diabetes care by offering self-management and education initiatives. The DM exercise supports the second layer of our framework. The third layer is related to the development of a web portal which provides a series of tacit and explicit knowledge interactions and conversions at two levels: individual diabetics and healthcare professionals. This knowledge web portal, which is described in the next chapter, provides effective application of the SECI model.
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7.
Chapter Seven: Web Portal for Diabetes Self-management
and Education in Saudi Arabia
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7.1 Introduction
The previous chapter demonstrated that there were a number of diabetes non-health- related complications that were extracted in the DM study. In this chapter, the design and development of our web portal is demonstrated. The web portal represents the third layer of our integrated framework, which applies the SECI model. The web portal aims to assist diabetic citizens in Saudi Arabia to control their diabetes mellitus and self-manage the non-health-related complications of the disease.