Using artificial intelligence to optimize delivery of weight loss treatment: Protocol for an efficacy and cost-effectiveness trial.

ABSTRACT: Gold standard behavioral weight loss (BWL) is limited by the availability of expert clinicians and high cost of delivery. The artificial intelligence (AI) technique of reinforcement learning (RL) is an optimization solution that tracks outcomes associated with specific actions and, over time, learns which actions yield a desired outcome. RL is increasingly utilized to optimize medical treatments (e.g., chemotherapy dosages), and has very recently started to be utilized by behavioral treatments. For example, we previously demonstrated that RL successfully optimized BWL by dynamically choosing between treatments of varying cost/intensity each week for each participant based on automatic monitoring of digital data (e.g., weight change). In that preliminary work, participants randomized to the

SUBMITTER: Forman EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9839592 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature