Patient level analytics using self-organising maps: A case study on Type-1 Diabetes self-care survey responses

Survey questionnaires are often heterogeneous because they contain both quantitative (numeric) and qualitative (text) responses, as well as missing values. While traditional, model-based methods are commonly used by clinicians, we deploy Self Organizing Maps (SOM) as a means to visualise the data. In a survey study aiming at understanding the self-care behaviour of 611 patients with Type-1 Diabetes, we show that SOM can be used to (1) identify co-morbidities; (2) to link self-care factors that are dependent on each other; and (3) to visualise individual patient profiles; In evaluation with clinicians and experts in Type-1 Diabetes, the knowledge and insights extracted using SOM correspond well to clinical expectation. Furthermore, the output of SOM in the form of a U-matrix is found to offer an interesting alternative means of visualising patient profiles instead of a usual tabular form.