Development and Integration of Machine Learning Algorithm to Identify Peripheral Arterial Disease: Multistakeholder Qualitative Study

Background: Machine learning (ML)-driven clinical decision support (CDS) continues to draw wide interest and investment as a means of improving care quality and value, despite mixed real-world implementation outcomes.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the factors that influence the integration of a peripheral arterial disease (PAD) identification algorithm to implement timely guideline-based care.

Methods: A total of 12 semistructured interviews were conducted with individuals from 3 stakeholder groups during the first 4 weeks of integration of an ML-driven CDS. The stakeholder groups included technical, administrative, and clinical members of the team interacting with the ML-driven CDS. The ML-driven CDS identified patients with a high probability of having PAD, and these patients were then reviewed by an interdisciplinary team that developed a recommended action plan and sent recommendations to the patient's primary care provider. Pseudonymized transcripts were coded, and thematic analysis was conducted by a multidisciplinary research team.

Results: Three themes were identified: positive factors translating in silico performance to real-world efficacy, organizational factors and data structure factors affecting clinical impact, and potential challenges to advancing equity. Our study found that the factors that led to successful translation of in silico algorithm performance to real-world impact were largely nontechnical, given adequate efficacy in retrospective validation, including strong clinical leadership, trustworthy workflows, early consideration of end-user needs, and ensuring that the CDS addresses an actionable problem. Negative factors of integration included failure to incorporate the on-the-ground context, the lack of feedback loops, and data silos limiting the ML-driven CDS. The success criteria for each stakeholder group were also characterized to better understand how teams work together to integrate ML-driven CDS and to understand the varying needs across stakeholder groups.

Conclusions: Longitudinal and multidisciplinary stakeholder engagement in the development and integration of ML-driven CDS underpins its effective translation into real-world care. Although previous studies have focused on the technical elements of ML-driven CDS, our study demonstrates the importance of including administrative and operational leaders as well as an early consideration of clinicians' needs. Seeing how different stakeholder groups have this more holistic perspective also permits more effective detection of context-driven health care inequities, which are uncovered or exacerbated via ML-driven CDS integration through structural and organizational challenges. Many of the solutions to these inequities lie outside the scope of ML and require coordinated systematic solutions for mitigation to help reduce disparities in the care of patients with PAD.