Three-stage intelligent support of clinical decision making for higher trust, validity, and explainability

The paper presents a conceptual framework for building practically applicable clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) using data-driven (DD) predictive modelling. With the proposed framework we have tried to fill the gap between experimental CDSS implementations widely covered in the literature and solutions acceptable by physicians in daily practice. The framework is based on a three-stage approach where DD model definition is accomplished with practical norms referencing (scales, clinical recommendations, etc.) and explanation of the prediction results and recommendations. The approach is aimed at increasing the applicability of CDSSs based on DD models through better integration into decision context and higher explainability. The approach has been implemented in software solutions and tested within a case study in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) prediction, enabling us to improve known clinical scales (such as FINDRISK) while keeping the problem-specific reasoning interface similar to existing applications. A survey was performed to assess and investigate the acceptance level and provide insights on the influences of the introduced framework's element on physicians' behavior.