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Analysis via Markov decision process to evaluate glycemic control strategies of a large retrospective cohort with type 2 diabetes: the ameliorate study

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Abstract

Aims

Our aim was to explore optimal treatment decisions for HbA1c control for type 2 diabetes mellitus patients and assess the impact on potential improvements in quality of life compared with current guidelines.

Methods

We analyzed a large dataset of HbA1c levels, diabetes-related key risk factors and medication dispensed to 70,069 patients with type 2 diabetes from polyclinics and a large public hospital in Singapore during January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2015. A Markov decision process (MDP) model was developed to determine the optimal treatment policy concerning medication management for glycemic control over a long-term treatment period. We assessed the model performance by comparing quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained by the model with those derived by a conventional Markov model informed by current clinical guidelines.

Results

Numerical results showed that optimal treatment strategies derived by the MDP model could increase the total expected QALYs by as much as 0.27 years for patients at higher risk such as old age, high HbA1c levels and smokers. In particular, the improvements in QALYs gained for patients with HbA1c levels of 9% (75 mmol/mol) and above were higher than those with lower HbA1c levels. However, the potential improvements appeared to be marginal for patients at lower risk compared with current guidelines.

Conclusions

Use of data-driven prescriptive analytics would help clinicians make evidence-based treatment decisions for HbA1c control for patients with type 2 diabetes, in particular for those at high risk.

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Availability of data and materials

The corresponding author has all the data and materials.

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Acknowledgements

F. Meng acknowledges funding support by the National Medical Research Council, Singapore, Grant Number NMRC/HSRNIG/0008/2015. The authors thank Professor Melvyn Sim, the Department of Analytics & Operations of National University of Singapore, for providing his modeling expertise in decision science under uncertain environments. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and comments which helped to improve the presentation of the paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Medical Research Council, Singapore, Grant Number NMRC/HSRNIG/0008/2015.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Services and Outcomes Research, National Healthcare Group, 3 Fusionopolis Link, #03-08 Nexus@one-north, Singapore, 138543, Singapore

    Fanwen Meng, Yan Sun & Bee Hoon Heng

  2. Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Programme, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore

    Melvin Khee Shing Leow

  3. Department of Endocrinology, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore, Singapore

    Melvin Khee Shing Leow

  4. Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Melvin Khee Shing Leow

  5. Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Melvin Khee Shing Leow

  6. Clinical Nutrition Research Centre, Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, A*STAR, Singapore, Singapore

    Melvin Khee Shing Leow

  7. Changi General Hospital, Singapore, Singapore

    Melvin Khee Shing Leow

Authors
  1. Fanwen Meng
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  2. Yan Sun
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  3. Bee Hoon Heng
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  4. Melvin Khee Shing Leow
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Contributions

FM contributed to the definition of the problem, model development, data analysis, writing, reviewing and editing the paper. YS contributed to the definition of the problem, model development, reviewing and editing the paper. BHH contributed to the definition of the problem, constructive scientific and clinical advice, reviewing and editing the paper. MKSL contributed to the definition of the problem, model development, constructive scientific and clinical advice, reviewing and editing the paper. FM performed numerical experiments and is the principal investigator of this work. All authors take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fanwen Meng.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Consent for publication

All the authors have approved the final manuscript and consented for publication.

Ethics standard statement

The data of this study were acquired in a retrospective study entitled “Evaluation of treatment strategies in prevention of stroke and coronary heart disease among type 2 diabetic patients using Markov decision process” and ethically approved by the Domain Specific Review Board (DSRB reference number—2015/00698) of National Healthcare Group, Singapore, which was determined by the DSRB to be an exempt category.

Informed consent

Informed consent from patients was not taken because this is a retrospective study and the data were de-identified.

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Meng, F., Sun, Y., Heng, B.H. et al. Analysis via Markov decision process to evaluate glycemic control strategies of a large retrospective cohort with type 2 diabetes: the ameliorate study. Acta Diabetol 57, 827–834 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00592-020-01492-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00592-020-01492-x

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