Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.

Sec. Gastroenterology

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1633890

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Gastrointestinal Disease Diagnosis with Interpretable AI and Edge Computing for Enhanced Patient CareView all articles

Frailty Prediction in Patients with Chronic Digestive System Diseases: Based on Multi-Task Learning Model

Provisionally accepted
Sihan  HuSihan Hu1,2*Xiaochuan  GuoXiaochuan Guo3Xiaobao  WangXiaobao Wang4Zixiang  JinZixiang Jin2Chenyang  ZhouChenyang Zhou4Lang  TuLang Tu5Zhoulong  ShiZhoulong Shi2Weiyi  AoWeiyi Ao6Xin  ZhangXin Zhang2Jay  ZhengJay Zheng7Xuezhi  ZhangXuezhi Zhang2HUI  YEHUI YE2*
  • 1First Hospital, Peking University, Beijing, China
  • 2Peking University, Beijing, China
  • 3Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, China
  • 4Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
  • 5Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
  • 6Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
  • 7loreal, paris, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: Chronic digestive system diseases (CDSD) pose a major health challenge worldwide, significantly increasing morbidity and mortality rates. The frailty index is crucial for assessing patient prognosis. To address the need for proactive healthcare, we developed a multi-timepoint frailty prediction model.: This study collected data from 565 patients with CDSD, including their frailty assessments at 3 and 6 years of follow-up. Utilizing the Multi-Gate Mixture-of-Experts (MMoE) framework, we built and evaluated five models: Tab Transformer, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Deep Neural Network (DNN), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Random Forest (RF). We comprehensively compared the predictive capabilities of these models on both validation and test sets. Results: The MMoE framework consistently outperforms single models in predicting both 3-year and 6-year frailty indices across most metrics. Specifically, for 3-year predictions, the single model achieves an accuracy of 0.9801 (95% CI: 0.963-0.990) on the train set and 0.5487 (95% CI: 0.457-0.637) on the test set, while the MMoE model reaches 0.956 (95% CI: 0.933-0.971) and 0.982 (95% CI: 0.938-0.995), respectively. The RF model demonstrated perfect performance, with Micro-AUC values of 1.000 in both training and test sets for both 3-year and 6-year intervals, leading other models in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score. The Tab Transformer model achieved high Micro-AUC values across all prediction intervals, with values of 0.997 and 0.995 in the training set for 3-year and 6-year predictions, respectively, and corresponding test set values of 0.999 and 0.987. Conclusion: This MMoE-based approach can predict frailty at key time points, 4 offering insights into frailty progression and aiding clinical decision making. Integrating this AI model into CDSD management can promote early interventions and personalized treatment plans.

Keywords: Chronic Digestive System Disease, Frailty Prediction, Multi-Timepoint Prediction, Multi-gate Mixture-of-Experts Framework, CHARLS database

Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 13 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Guo, Wang, Jin, Zhou, Tu, Shi, Ao, Zhang, Zheng, Zhang and YE. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Sihan Hu, First Hospital, Peking University, Beijing, China
HUI YE, Peking University, Beijing, China

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.