Development of Explainable Machine Learning Framework for Early Detection and Risk Stratification of Diabetes in Age Specific Variations

ObjectiveTo develop and evaluate a novel machine learning (ML) framework tailored to a clinical diabetes dataset and to assess whether demographic stratification enhances model performance and interpretability for multiclass diabetes classification. MethodsA clinical dataset of 264 patients records was used to classify individuals into non-diabetic, prediabetic and diabetic categories. Several supervised learning models were trained using 80:20 train-test split and optimized using RandomizedSearchCV Model and 10-fold cross validation. Model performance was evaluated using the metrics accuracy, precision, recall and the F1-score. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was calculated for the best generalizing model. A structured ML framework was developed for this dataset, incorporating preprocessing, model optimization, age stratification analysis age (<35 vs [&ge;]35 years) and gender. SHAP was developed for model interpretability. ResultsEnsemble methods demonstrated superior performance in comparison to linear or single-tree approaches, with Gradient Boosting showing the most stable generalization with a test accuracy of 0.981 and stable cross validation accuracy of 0.972. AUC-ROC analysis using Gradient Boosting yielded good discriminative ability across the three diabetes classes: 0.991 (non-diabetic), 0.986 (prediabetic) and 0.972 (diabetic). Stratified analysis showed improved reliability in individuals aged [&ge;]35 years (accuracy = 0.94, F1-score = 0.92), while performance in younger individuals was unstable due to small sample size. SHAP analysis identified HbA1c, BMI, and age as dominant predictors. ConclusionThis study presents a ML framework integrating age stratified modelling with explainable ML frameworks to improve interpretability. The findings offer clinically relevant results that can support clinical decision-making systems, individualized risk assessment, and potential applications for targeted intervention in diabetes progression.