A Nutrition Expert System for Pregnant Women

Abstract

Introduction: Pregnancy is one of the most sensitive and important periods of a woman’s life. It is necessary to have a proper diet program based on physiologic changes and individual characteristics during pregnancy in order to meet the needs of mother and fetus, weight control, and prevention of different diseases and complications. The aim of this research was to implement an expert system for weight control surveillance and nutritional consulting. Methods: This study was an applied and descriptive study as performed on a random sample of 100 pregnant women. The system designing was created using expert systems methods based on rules and forward chaining technique. The web-based expert system was designed in two sections: weight controlling and suggestive diet. Then, the system output was compared with the actual advices provided by nutrition experts. Results: Using kappa index in SPSS software, the similarity of the results of designed system to the diagnosis by nutritionist was 0.89 (very strong) in weight control surveillance, and 0.79 (strong) in proposed diet. Conclusion: The findings of the study show that such systems can play an effective helping role in promoting healthy diet, weight control, and using diet among pregnant women, especially those who cannot easily access an expert nutritionist in some areas.

Keywords

• Expert Systems
• Pregnancy
• Body Mass Index
• Diet