Development and validation of a machine learning-augmented algorithm for diabetes screening in community and primary care settings: A population-based study

AI in the Health Sector: Systematic Review of Key Skills for Future Health Professionals

Background

Technological advancements have significantly reshaped health care, introducing digital solutions that enhance diagnostics and patient care. Artificial intelligence (AI) stands out, offering unprecedented capabilities in data analysis, diagnostic support, and personalized medicine. However, effectively integrating AI into health care necessitates specialized competencies among professionals, an area still in its infancy in terms of comprehensive literature and formalized training programs.

Objective

This systematic review aims to consolidate the essential skills and knowledge health care professionals need to integrate AI into their clinical practice effectively, according to the published literature.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review, across databases PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, of peer-reviewed literature that directly explored the required skills for health care professionals to integrate AI into their practice, published in English or Spanish from 2018 onward. Studies that did not refer to specific skills or training in digital health were not included, discarding those that did not directly contribute to understanding the competencies necessary to integrate AI into health care practice. Bias in the examined works was evaluated following Cochrane's domain-based recommendations.

Results

The initial database search yielded a total of 2457 articles. After deleting duplicates and screening titles and abstracts, 37 articles were selected for full-text review. Out of these, only 7 met all the inclusion criteria for this systematic review. The review identified a diverse range of skills and competencies, that we categorized into 14 key areas classified based on their frequency of appearance in the selected studies, including AI fundamentals, data analytics and management, and ethical considerations.

Conclusions

Despite the broadening of search criteria to capture the evolving nature of AI in health care, the review underscores a significant gap in focused studies on the required competencies. Moreover, the review highlights the critical role of regulatory bodies such as the US Food and Drug Administration in facilitating the adoption of AI technologies by establishing trust and standardizing algorithms. Key areas were identified for developing competencies among health care professionals for the implementation of AI, including: AI fundamentals knowledge (more focused on assessing the accuracy, reliability, and validity of AI algorithms than on more technical abilities such as programming or mathematics), data analysis skills (including data acquisition, cleaning, visualization, management, and governance), and ethical and legal considerations. In an AI-enhanced health care landscape, the ability to humanize patient care through effective communication is paramount. This balance ensures that while AI streamlines tasks and potentially increases patient interaction time, health care professionals maintain a focus on compassionate care, thereby leveraging AI to enhance, rather than detract from, the patient experience. .

Development and validation of machine learning-augmented algorithm for insulin sensitivity assessment in the community and primary care settings: a population-based study in China

Objective

Insulin plays a central role in the regulation of energy and glucose homeostasis, and insulin resistance (IR) is widely considered as the "common soil" of a cluster of cardiometabolic disorders. Assessment of insulin sensitivity is very important in preventing and treating IR-related disease. This study aims to develop and validate machine learning (ML)-augmented algorithms for insulin sensitivity assessment in the community and primary care settings.

Methods

We analyzed the data of 9358 participants over 40 years old who participated in the population-based cohort of the Hubei center of the REACTION study (Risk Evaluation of Cancers in Chinese Diabetic Individuals). Three non-ensemble algorithms and four ensemble algorithms were used to develop the models with 70 non-laboratory variables for the community and 87 (70 non-laboratory and 17 laboratory) variables for the primary care settings to screen the classifier of the state-of-the-art. The models with the best performance were further streamlined using top-ranked 5, 8, 10, 13, 15, and 20 features. Performances of these ML models were evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), the area under the precision-recall curve (AUPR), and the Brier score. The Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) analysis was employed to evaluate the importance of features and interpret the models.

Results

The LightGBM models developed for the community (AUROC 0.794, AUPR 0.575, Brier score 0.145) and primary care settings (AUROC 0.867, AUPR 0.705, Brier score 0.119) achieved higher performance than the models constructed by the other six algorithms. The streamlined LightGBM models for the community (AUROC 0.791, AUPR 0.563, Brier score 0.146) and primary care settings (AUROC 0.863, AUPR 0.692, Brier score 0.124) using the 20 top-ranked variables also showed excellent performance. SHAP analysis indicated that the top-ranked features included fasting plasma glucose (FPG), waist circumference (WC), body mass index (BMI), triglycerides (TG), gender, waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), the number of daughters born, resting pulse rate (RPR), etc.

Conclusion

The ML models using the LightGBM algorithm are efficient to predict insulin sensitivity in the community and primary care settings accurately and might potentially become an efficient and practical tool for insulin sensitivity assessment in these settings.