Contextualized Interpretable Machine Learning for Medical Diagnosis

The evolution of artificial intelligence and related technologies have the potential to drastically increase the clinical importance of automated diagnosis tools. Putting these tools into use, however, is challenging, since the algorithm outcome will be used to make clinical decisions and wrong predictions can prevent the most appropriate treatment from being provided to the patient. Models should not only provide accurate predictions, but also evidence that supports the outcomes, so they can be audited, and their predictions double-checked. Some models are constructed in such a way they are difficult to interpret, hence the name black-box models. While there are methods that generate explanations for generic black-box classifiers,9 the solutions are usually not tailored for the needs of physicians and do not take any medical background into consideration.