Multi-Objective Optimization for Controlling the Dynamics of the Diabetic Population

To limit the adverse effects of diabetes, a personalized and long-term management strategy that includes appropriate medication, exercise and diet has become of paramount importance and necessity. Compartment-based mathematical control models for diabetes usually result in objective functions whose terms are conflicting, preventing the use of single-objective-based models for obtaining appropriate personalized strategies. Taking into account the conflicting aspects when controlling the diabetic population dynamics, this paper introduces a multi-objective approach consisting of four steps: (a) modeling the problem of controlling the diabetic population dynamics using a multi-objective mathematical model, (b) discretizing the model using the trapezoidal rule and the Euler–Cauchy method, (c) using swarm-intelligence-based optimizers to solve the model and (d) structuring the set of controls using soft clustering methods, known for their flexibility. In contrast to single-objective approaches, experimental results show that the multi-objective approach obtains appropriate personalized controls, where the control associated with the compartment of diabetics without complications is totally different from that associated with the compartment of diabetics with complications. Moreover, these controls enable a significant reduction in the number of diabetics with and without complications, and the multi-objective strategy saves up to 4% of the resources needed for the control of diabetes without complications and up to 18% of resources for the control of diabetes with complications.