Exploring the Requirements of Clinicians for Explainable AI Decision Support Systems in Intensive Care
This work addresses the need for trustworthy AI in intensive care settings, but it is incremental as it focuses on gathering requirements rather than developing new methods.
The study investigated the requirements of ICU clinicians for explainable AI decision support systems, revealing three core themes about decision-making factors, patient complexity, and system capabilities, and provided design recommendations based on interviews with seven clinicians.
There is a growing need to understand how digital systems can support clinical decision-making, particularly as artificial intelligence (AI) models become increasingly complex and less human-interpretable. This complexity raises concerns about trustworthiness, impacting safe and effective adoption of such technologies. Improved understanding of decision-making processes and requirements for explanations coming from decision support tools is a vital component in providing effective explainable solutions. This is particularly relevant in the data-intensive, fast-paced environments of intensive care units (ICUs). To explore these issues, group interviews were conducted with seven ICU clinicians, representing various roles and experience levels. Thematic analysis revealed three core themes: (T1) ICU decision-making relies on a wide range of factors, (T2) the complexity of patient state is challenging for shared decision-making, and (T3) requirements and capabilities of AI decision support systems. We include design recommendations from clinical input, providing insights to inform future AI systems for intensive care.