Comparative Performance of the ARIMA, ARIMAX and SES Model for Estimating Reported Cases of Diabetes Mellitus in Anambra State, Nigeria

This study examined the performance of the ARIMA, ARIMAX and the Single Exponential Smoothing (SES) model for the estimation of diabetes cases in Anambra State with the following specific objectives: to fit the model to the data, to determine the best fit model for estimating diabetes mellitus cases and forecast for expected cases for period of five years. The secondary data used for the study is sourced from records of Anambra state Ministry of Health. The Akaike information criterion is adopted for assessing the performance of the models. The R-software is employed for the analysis of data. The results obtained showed that the data satisfied normality and stationarity requirements. The finding of the study showed that ARIMA model has least value of AIC of 1177.92, following the ARIMAX model with value of AIC=1542.25 and SEM recorded highest value of 1595.67. The findings further revealed that the ARIMA has the least values across the measures of accuracy. More so, five years predictions of the cases of diabetes mellitus were obtained using the models under study. From the results of the findings, ARIMA model proved to be best alternative for estimating reported cases of diabetes mellitus in Anambra state. Based on the findings, we recommend there is need for medical practitioners /health planners to create awareness and inform patients about the possible related risk factors of death through early diagnosis and intervention.