Development of an artificial intelligence bacteremia prediction model and evaluation of its impact on physician predictions focusing on uncertainty

Prediction of bacteremia is a clinically important but challenging task. An artificial intelligence (AI) model has the potential to facilitate early bacteremia prediction, aiding emergency department (ED) physicians in making timely decisions and reducing unnecessary medical costs. In this study, we developed and externally validated a Bayesian neural network-based AI bacteremia prediction model (AI-BPM). We also evaluated its impact on physician predictive performance considering both AI and physician uncertainties using historical patient data. A retrospective cohort of 15,362 adult patients with blood cultures performed in the ED was used to develop the AI-BPM. The AI-BPM used structured and unstructured text data acquired during the early stage of ED visit, and provided both the point estimate and 95% confidence interval (CI) of its predictions. High AI-BPM uncertainty was defined as when the predetermined bacteremia risk threshold (5%) was included in the 95% CI of the AI-BPM prediction, and low AI-BPM uncertainty was when it was not included. In the temporal validation dataset (N = 8,188), the AI-BPM achieved area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.754 (95% CI 0.737–0.771), sensitivity of 0.917 (95% CI 0.897–0.934), and specificity of 0.340 (95% CI 0.330–0.351). In the external validation dataset (N = 7,029), the AI-BPM’s AUC was 0.738 (95% CI 0.722–0.755), sensitivity was 0.927 (95% CI 0.909–0.942), and specificity was 0.319 (95% CI 0.307–0.330). The AUC of the post-AI physicians predictions (0.703, 95% CI 0.654–0.753) was significantly improved compared with that of the pre-AI predictions (0.639, 95% CI 0.585–0.693; p-value < 0.001) in the sampled dataset (N = 1,000). The AI-BPM especially improved the predictive performance of physicians in cases with high physician uncertainty (low subjective confidence) and low AI-BPM uncertainty. Our results suggest that the uncertainty of both the AI model and physicians should be considered for successful AI model implementation.