Significant shared heritability underlies suicide attempt and clinically predicted probability of attempting suicide.

Suicide accounts for nearly 800,000 deaths per year worldwide with rates of both deaths and attempts rising. Family studies have estimated substantial heritability of suicidal behavior; however, collecting the sample sizes necessary for successful genetic studies has remained a challenge. We utilized two different approaches in independent datasets to characterize the contribution of common genetic variation to suicide attempt. The first is a patient reported suicide attempt phenotype asked as part of an online mental health survey taken by a subset of participants (n = 157,366) in the UK Biobank. After quality control, we leveraged a genotyped set of unrelated, white British ancestry participants including 2433 cases and 334,766 controls that included those that did not participate in the survey or were not explicitly asked about attempting suicide. The second leveraged electronic health record (EHR) data from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC, 2.8 million patients, 3250 cases) and machine learning to derive probabilities of attempting suicide in 24,546 genotyped patients. We identified significant and comparable heritability estimates of suicide attempt from both the patient reported phenotype in the UK Biobank (h2SNP = 0.035, p = 7.12 × 10-4) and the clinically predicted phenotype from VUMC (h2SNP = 0.046, p = 1.51 × 10-2). A significant genetic overlap was demonstrated between the two measures of suicide attempt in these independent samples through polygenic risk score analysis (t = 4.02, p = 5.75 × 10-5) and genetic correlation (rg = 1.073, SE = 0.36, p = 0.003). Finally, we show significant but incomplete genetic correlation of suicide attempt with insomnia (rg = 0.34-0.81) as well as several psychiatric disorders (rg = 0.26-0.79). This work demonstrates the contribution of common genetic variation to suicide attempt. It points to a genetic underpinning to clinically predicted risk of attempting suicide that is similar to the genetic profile from a patient reported outcome. Lastly, it presents an approach for using EHR data and clinical prediction to generate quantitative measures from binary phenotypes that can improve power for genetic studies.

Telehealth for Endocrinology: Experience and Effect on Utilization in the Prepandemic Era.

OBJECTIVE: Telehealth (TH) use in endocrinology was limited before the COVID-19 pandemic but will remain a major modality of care postpandemic. Reimbursement policies have been limited historically due to concerns of overutilization of visits and testing. Additionally, there is limited literature on endocrinology care delivered via TH for conditions other than diabetes. We assess real-world TH use for endocrinology in a prepandemic environment with the hypothesis that TH would not increase the utilization of total visits or related ancillary testing services compared with conventional (CVL) face-to-face office visits. METHODS: A single-institution retrospective cohort study assessing the prepandemic use of TH in endocrinology, consisting of 75 patients seen via TH and 225 patients seen in CVL visits. For most patients, TH was conducted via a clinic-to-clinic model. Outcomes measured were total endocrine visit frequency and frequency of related laboratory and radiology testing per patient, hemoglobin A1C, microalbumin, low-density lipoprotein, thyroid-stimulating hormone, thyroglobulin, and thyroid ultrasounds. RESULTS: For all endocrine visits, TH patients had a median of 0.24 (interquartile range, 0.015-0.36) visits per month. CVL patients had a median of 0.20 visits per month (interquartile range, 0.11-0.37). Total visits per month did not vary significantly between groups (P = .051). Hemoglobin A1C outcomes were equivalent and there was no increase in ancillary laboratory testing for the TH group. CONCLUSION: Our observations demonstrate that, in a prepandemic health care setting, TH visits can provide equivalent care for endocrinology patients, without increasing utilization of total visits or ancillary services.

2020 Focused Updates to the Asthma Management Guidelines: A Report from the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Coordinating Committee Expert Panel Working Group.

The 2020 Focused Updates to the Asthma Management Guidelines: A Report from the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Coordinating Committee Expert Panel Working Group was coordinated and supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. It is designed to improve patient care and support informed decision making about asthma management in the clinical setting. This update addresses six priority topic areas as determined by the state of the science at the time of a needs assessment, and input from multiple stakeholders:A rigorous process was undertaken to develop these evidence-based guidelines. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Evidence-Based Practice Centers conducted systematic reviews on these topics, which were used by the Expert Panel Working Group as a basis for developing recommendations and guidance. The Expert Panel used GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation), an internationally accepted framework, in consultation with an experienced methodology team for determining the certainty of evidence and the direction and strength of recommendations based on the evidence. Practical implementation guidance for each recommendation incorporates findings from NHLBI-led patient, caregiver, and clinician focus groups. To assist clincians in implementing these recommendations into patient care, the new recommendations have been integrated into the existing Expert Panel Report-3 (EPR-3) asthma management step diagram format.

Detection of calibration drift in clinical prediction models to inform model updating.

Model calibration, critical to the success and safety of clinical prediction models, deteriorates over time in response to the dynamic nature of clinical environments. To support informed, data-driven model updating strategies, we present and evaluate a calibration drift detection system. Methods are developed for maintaining dynamic calibration curves with optimized online stochastic gradient descent and for detecting increasing miscalibration with adaptive sliding windows. These methods are generalizable to support diverse prediction models developed using a variety of learning algorithms and customizable to address the unique needs of clinical use cases. In both simulation and case studies, our system accurately detected calibration drift. When drift is detected, our system further provides actionable alerts by including information on a window of recent data that may be appropriate for model updating. Simulations showed these windows were primarily composed of data accruing after drift onset, supporting the potential utility of the windows for model updating. By promoting model updating as calibration deteriorates rather than on pre-determined schedules, implementations of our drift detection system may minimize interim periods of insufficient model accuracy and focus analytic resources on those models most in need of attention.

A method for analyzing inpatient care variability through physicians' orders.

OBJECTIVE: Administrators assess care variability through chart review or cost variability to inform care standardization efforts. Chart review is costly and cost variability is imprecise. This study explores the potential of physician orders as an alternative measure of care variability. MATERIALS & METHODS: The authors constructed an order variability metric from adult Vanderbilt University Hospital patients treated between 2013 and 2016. The study compared how well a cost variability model predicts variability in the length of stay compared to an order variability model. Both models adjusted for covariates such as severity of illness, comorbidities, and hospital transfers. RESULTS: The order variability model significantly minimized the Akaike information criterion (superior outcome) compared to the cost variability model. This result also held when excluding patients who received intensive care. CONCLUSION: Order variability can potentially typify care variability better than cost variability. Order variability is a scalable metric, calculable during the course of care.

Maintaining automated measurement of Choosing Wisely adherence across the ICD 9 to 10 transition.

BACKGROUND: It remains unclear how to incorporate terminology changes, such as the International Classification of Disease (ICD) transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10, into established automated healthcare quality metrics. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether general equivalence mapping (GEM) can apply ICD-9 based metrics to ICD-10 patient data. To develop and validate novel ICD-10 reference codesets. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis for eleven Choosing Wisely (CW) metrics was performed using three scripted algorithms on an institutional clinical data warehouse. ICD-10 data were compared against published ICD-9 based metric definitions using two equivalence mapping algorithms. A third algorithm implemented novel reference ICD-10 codes matching the original ICD-9 codes' intent for comparison with patient ICD-10 data. PARTICIPANTS: All adult patients seen at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, April - September 2016. MAIN MEASURES: The prevalence of eleven CW services during the six-month period. KEY RESULTS: The three algorithms found similar prevalence of avoidable CW services, with an unweighted-mean of 8.4% (range: 0.16-65%), or approximately 20,000 CW services out of 240,000 potential cases in 515,406 unique patients. The algorithms' median sensitivity was 0.80 (interquartile range: 0.75-0.95), median specificity was 0.88 (IQR: 0.77-0.94), and median Rand accuracy was 0.84 (IQR: 0.79-0.89). The attributed waste of these eleven services for the period ranged from $871,049 to $951,829 between methods. Accuracy assessment demonstrated that the GEM-based methods suffered recall losses for metrics requiring multistep mapping due to incompleteness, while novel ICD-10 metric definitions avoided these challenges. CONCLUSIONS: Comprehensive mapping enables use of legacy metrics across ICD generations, but requires computational complexity that can be avoided with novel ICD-10 based metric definitions. Variation in the dollars attributed to waste due to ICD mapping introduces ambiguity that may affect quality-based reimbursement.

Predicting suicide attempts in adolescents with longitudinal clinical data and machine learning.

BACKGROUND: Adolescents have high rates of nonfatal suicide attempts, but clinically practical risk prediction remains a challenge. Screening can be time consuming to implement at scale, if it is done at all. Computational algorithms may predict suicide risk using only routinely collected clinical data. We used a machine learning approach validated on longitudinal clinical data in adults to address this challenge in adolescents. METHODS: This is a retrospective, longitudinal cohort study. Data were collected from the Vanderbilt Synthetic Derivative from January 1998 to December 2015 and included 974 adolescents with nonfatal suicide attempts and multiple control comparisons: 496 adolescents with other self-injury (OSI), 7,059 adolescents with depressive symptoms, and 25,081 adolescent general hospital controls. Candidate predictors included diagnostic, demographic, medication, and socioeconomic factors. Outcome was determined by multiexpert review of electronic health records. Random forests were validated with optimism adjustment at multiple time points (from 1 week to 2 years). Recalibration was done via isotonic regression. Evaluation metrics included discrimination (AUC, sensitivity/specificity, precision/recall) and calibration (calibration plots, slope/intercept, Brier score). RESULTS: Computational models performed well and did not require face-to-face screening. Performance improved as suicide attempts became more imminent. Discrimination was good in comparison with OSI controls (AUC = 0.83 [0.82-0.84] at 720 days; AUC = 0.85 [0.84-0.87] at 7 days) and depressed controls (AUC = 0.87 [95% CI 0.85-0.90] at 720 days; 0.90 [0.85-0.94] at 7 days) and best in comparison with general hospital controls (AUC 0.94 [0.92-0.96] at 720 days; 0.97 [0.95-0.98] at 7 days). Random forests significantly outperformed logistic regression in every comparison. Recalibration improved performance as much as ninefold - clinical recommendations with poorly calibrated predictions can lead to decision errors. CONCLUSIONS: Machine learning on longitudinal clinical data may provide a scalable approach to broaden screening for risk of nonfatal suicide attempts in adolescents.

Psychosocial co-morbidities in Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain syndrome (IC/BPS): A systematic review.

AIMS: Psychosocial factors amplify symptoms of Interstitial Cystitis (IC/BPS). While psychosocial self-management is efficacious in other pain conditions, its impact on an IC/BPS population has rarely been studied. The objective of this review is to learn the prevalence and impact of psychosocial factors on IC/BPS, assess baseline psychosocial characteristics, and offer recommendations for assessment and treatment. METHOD: Following PRISMA guidelines, primary information sources were PubMed including MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and GoogleScholar. Inclusion criteria included: (i) a clearly defined cohort with IC/BPS or with Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome provided the IC/BPS cohort was delineated with quantitative results from the main cohort; (ii) all genders and regions; (iii) studies written in English from 1995 to April 14, 2017; (iv) quantitative report of psychosocial factors as outcome measures or at minimum as baseline characteristics. RESULTS: Thirty-four of an initial 642 articles were reviewed. Quantitative analyses demonstrate the magnitude of psychosocial difficulties in IC/BPS, which are worse than average on all measures, and fall into areas of clinical concern for 7 out of 10 measures. Meta-analyses shows mean Mental Component Score of the Short-Form 12 Health Survey (MCS) of 40.80 (SD 6.25, N = 2912), where <36 is consistent with severe psychological impairment. Averaged across studies, the population scored in the range seen in clinical depression (CES-D 19.89, SD 13.12, N = 564) and generalized anxiety disorder (HADS-A 8.15, SD 4.85, N = 465). CONCLUSION: The psychological impact of IC/BPS is pervasive and severe. Existing evidence of treatment is lacking and suggests self-management intervention may be helpful.

Discovering hidden knowledge through auditing clinical diagnostic knowledge bases.

OBJECTIVE: Evaluate potential for data mining auditing techniques to identify hidden concepts in diagnostic knowledge bases (KB). Improving completeness enhances KB applications such as differential diagnosis and patient case simulation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Authors used unsupervised (Pearson's correlation - PC, Kendall's correlation - KC, and a heuristic algorithm - HA) methods to identify existing and discover new finding-finding interrelationships ("properties") in the INTERNIST-1/QMR KB. Authors estimated KB maintenance efficiency gains (effort reduction) of the approaches. RESULTS: The methods discovered new properties at 95% CI rates of [0.1%, 5.4%] (PC), [2.8%, 12.5%] (KC), and [5.6%, 18.8%] (HA). Estimated manual effort reduction for HA-assisted determination of new properties was approximately 50-fold. CONCLUSION: Data mining can provide an efficient supplement to ensuring the completeness of finding-finding interdependencies in diagnostic knowledge bases. Authors' findings should be applicable to other diagnostic systems that record finding frequencies within diseases (e.g., DXplain, ISABEL).

Beyond discrimination: A comparison of calibration methods and clinical usefulness of predictive models of readmission risk.

BACKGROUND: Prior to implementing predictive models in novel settings, analyses of calibration and clinical usefulness remain as important as discrimination, but they are not frequently discussed. Calibration is a model's reflection of actual outcome prevalence in its predictions. Clinical usefulness refers to the utilities, costs, and harms of using a predictive model in practice. A decision analytic approach to calibrating and selecting an optimal intervention threshold may help maximize the impact of readmission risk and other preventive interventions. OBJECTIVES: To select a pragmatic means of calibrating predictive models that requires a minimum amount of validation data and that performs well in practice. To evaluate the impact of miscalibration on utility and cost via clinical usefulness analyses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Observational, retrospective cohort study with electronic health record data from 120,000 inpatient admissions at an urban, academic center in Manhattan. The primary outcome was thirty-day readmission for three causes: all-cause, congestive heart failure, and chronic coronary atherosclerotic disease. Predictive modeling was performed via L1-regularized logistic regression. Calibration methods were compared including Platt Scaling, Logistic Calibration, and Prevalence Adjustment. Performance of predictive modeling and calibration was assessed via discrimination (c-statistic), calibration (Spiegelhalter Z-statistic, Root Mean Square Error [RMSE] of binned predictions, Sanders and Murphy Resolutions of the Brier Score, Calibration Slope and Intercept), and clinical usefulness (utility terms represented as costs). The amount of validation data necessary to apply each calibration algorithm was also assessed. RESULTS: C-statistics by diagnosis ranged from 0.7 for all-cause readmission to 0.86 (0.78-0.93) for congestive heart failure. Logistic Calibration and Platt Scaling performed best and this difference required analyzing multiple metrics of calibration simultaneously, in particular Calibration Slopes and Intercepts. Clinical usefulness analyses provided optimal risk thresholds, which varied by reason for readmission, outcome prevalence, and calibration algorithm. Utility analyses also suggested maximum tolerable intervention costs, e.g., $1720 for all-cause readmissions based on a published cost of readmission of $11,862. CONCLUSIONS: Choice of calibration method depends on availability of validation data and on performance. Improperly calibrated models may contribute to higher costs of intervention as measured via clinical usefulness. Decision-makers must understand underlying utilities or costs inherent in the use-case at hand to assess usefulness and will obtain the optimal risk threshold to trigger intervention with intervention cost limits as a result.

Completeness and readability of GPT-4-generated multilingual discharge instructions in the pediatric emergency department.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the completeness and readability of generative pre-trained transformer-4 (GPT-4)-generated discharge instructions at prespecified reading levels for common pediatric emergency room complaints. Materials and Methods: The outputs for 6 discharge scenarios stratified by reading level (fifth or eighth grade) and language (English, Spanish) were generated fivefold using GPT-4. Specifically, 120 discharge instructions were produced and analyzed (6 scenarios: 60 in English, 60 in Spanish; 60 at a fifth-grade reading level, 60 at an eighth-grade reading level) and compared for completeness and readability (between language, between reading level, and stratified by group and reading level). Completeness was defined as the proportion of literature-derived key points included in discharge instructions. Readability was quantified using Flesch-Kincaid (English) and Fernandez-Huerta (Spanish) readability scores. Results: English-language GPT-generated discharge instructions contained a significantly higher proportion of must-include discharge instructions than those in Spanish (English: mean (standard error of the mean) = 62% (3%), Spanish: 53% (3%), P = .02). In the fifth-grade and eighth-grade level conditions, there was no significant difference between English and Spanish outputs in completeness. Readability did not differ across languages. Discussion: GPT-4 produced readable discharge instructions in English and Spanish while modulating document reading level. Discharge instructions in English tended to have higher completeness than those in Spanish. Conclusion: Future research in prompt engineering and GPT-4 performance, both generally and in multiple languages, is needed to reduce potential for health disparities by language and reading level.

Development and multi-site external validation of a generalizable risk prediction model for bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder is a leading contributor to disability, premature mortality, and suicide. Early identification of risk for bipolar disorder using generalizable predictive models trained on diverse cohorts around the United States could improve targeted assessment of high risk individuals, reduce misdiagnosis, and improve the allocation of limited mental health resources. This observational case-control study intended to develop and validate generalizable predictive models of bipolar disorder as part of the multisite, multinational PsycheMERGE Network across diverse and large biobanks with linked electronic health records (EHRs) from three academic medical centers: in the Northeast (Massachusetts General Brigham), the Mid-Atlantic (Geisinger) and the Mid-South (Vanderbilt University Medical Center). Predictive models were developed and valid with multiple algorithms at each study site: random forests, gradient boosting machines, penalized regression, including stacked ensemble learning algorithms combining them. Predictors were limited to widely available EHR-based features agnostic to a common data model including demographics, diagnostic codes, and medications. The main study outcome was bipolar disorder diagnosis as defined by the International Cohort Collection for Bipolar Disorder, 2015. In total, the study included records for 3,529,569 patients including 12,533 cases (0.3%) of bipolar disorder. After internal and external validation, algorithms demonstrated optimal performance in their respective development sites. The stacked ensemble achieved the best combination of overall discrimination (AUC = 0.82-0.87) and calibration performance with positive predictive values above 5% in the highest risk quantiles at all three study sites. In conclusion, generalizable predictive models of risk for bipolar disorder can be feasibly developed across diverse sites to enable precision medicine. Comparison of a range of machine learning methods indicated that an ensemble approach provides the best performance overall but required local retraining. These models will be disseminated via the PsycheMERGE Network website.

Divergent trends in accidental deaths since return from an Afghanistan/Iraq deployment among army soldiers.

PURPOSE: Accidental death is a leading cause of mortality among military members and Veterans; however, knowledge is limited regarding time-dependent risk following deployment and if there are differences by type of accidental death. METHODS: Longitudinal cohort study (N = 860,930) of soldiers returning from Afghanistan/Iraq deployments in fiscal years 2008-2014. Accidental deaths (i.e., motor vehicle accidents [MVA], accidental overdose, other accidental deaths), were identified through 2018. Crude and age-adjusted mortality rates, rate ratios, time-dependent hazard rates and trends postdeployment were compared across demographic and military characteristics. RESULTS: During the postdeployment observation period, over one-third of deaths were accidental; most were MVA (46.0 %) or overdoses (37.9 %). Across accidental mortality categories (all, MVA, overdose), younger soldiers (18-24, 25-29) were at higher risk compared to older soldiers (40+), and females at lower risk than males. MVA death rates were highest immediately postdeployment, with a significant decreasing hazard rate over time (annual percent change [APC]: -6.5 %). Conversely, accidental overdose death rates were lowest immediately following deployment, with a significant increasing hazard rate over time (APC: 9.9 %). CONCLUSIONS: Observed divergent trends in risk for the most common types of accidental deaths provide essential information to inform prevention and intervention planning for the immediate postdeployment transition and long-term.

Randomized Controlled Comparative Effectiveness Trial of Risk Model-Guided Clinical Decision Support for Suicide Screening.

Suicide prevention requires risk identification, appropriate intervention, and follow-up. Traditional risk identification relies on patient self-reporting, support network reporting, or face-to-face screening with validated instruments or history and physical exam. In the last decade, statistical risk models have been studied and more recently deployed to augment clinical judgment. Models have generally been found to be low precision or problematic at scale due to low incidence. Few have been tested in clinical practice, and none have been tested in clinical trials to our knowledge. Methods: We report the results of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) in three outpatient adult Neurology clinic settings. This two-arm trial compared the effectiveness of Interruptive and Non-Interruptive Clinical Decision Support (CDS) to prompt further screening of suicidal ideation for those predicted to be high risk using a real-time, validated statistical risk model of suicide attempt risk, with the decision to screen as the primary end point. Secondary outcomes included rates of suicidal ideation and attempts in both arms. Manual chart review of every trial encounter was used to determine if suicide risk assessment was subsequently documented. Results: From August 16, 2022, through February 16, 2023, our study randomized 596 patient encounters across 561 patients for providers to receive either Interruptive or Non-Interruptive CDS in a 1:1 ratio. Adjusting for provider cluster effects, Interruptive CDS led to significantly higher numbers of decisions to screen (42%=121/289 encounters) compared to Non-Interruptive CDS (4%=12/307) (odds ratio=17.7, p-value <0.001). Secondarily, no documented episodes of suicidal ideation or attempts occurred in either arm. While the proportion of documented assessments among those noting the decision to screen was higher for providers in the Non-Interruptive arm (92%=11/12) than in the Interruptive arm (52%=63/121), the interruptive CDS was associated with more frequent documentation of suicide risk assessment (63/289 encounters compared to 11/307, p-value<0.001). Conclusions: In this pragmatic RCT of real-time predictive CDS to guide suicide risk assessment, Interruptive CDS led to higher numbers of decisions to screen and documented suicide risk assessments. Well-powered large-scale trials randomizing this type of CDS compared to standard of care are indicated to measure effectiveness in reducing suicidal self-harm. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05312437.

Genome-Wide Association Study of Treatment-Resistant Depression: Shared Biology With Metabolic Traits.

OBJECTIVE: Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) occurs in roughly one-third of all individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Although research has suggested a significant common variant genetic component of liability to TRD, with heritability estimated at 8% when compared with non-treatment-resistant MDD, no replicated genetic loci have been identified, and the genetic architecture of TRD remains unclear. A key barrier to this work has been the paucity of adequately powered cohorts for investigation, largely because of the challenge in prospectively investigating this phenotype. The objective of this study was to perform a well-powered genetic study of TRD. METHODS: Using receipt of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as a surrogate for TRD, the authors applied standard machine learning methods to electronic health record data to derive predicted probabilities of receiving ECT. These probabilities were then applied as a quantitative trait in a genome-wide association study of 154,433 genotyped patients across four large biobanks. RESULTS: Heritability estimates ranged from 2% to 4.2%, and significant genetic overlap was observed with cognition, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, alcohol and smoking traits, and body mass index. Two genome-wide significant loci were identified, both previously implicated in metabolic traits, suggesting shared biology and potential pharmacological implications. CONCLUSIONS: This work provides support for the utility of estimation of disease probability for genomic investigation and provides insights into the genetic architecture and biology of TRD.

Practical Considerations and Applied Examples of Cross-Validation for Model Development and Evaluation in Health Care: Tutorial.

Cross-validation remains a popular means of developing and validating artificial intelligence for health care. Numerous subtypes of cross-validation exist. Although tutorials on this validation strategy have been published and some with applied examples, we present here a practical tutorial comparing multiple forms of cross-validation using a widely accessible, real-world electronic health care data set: Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-III (MIMIC-III). This tutorial explored methods such as K-fold cross-validation and nested cross-validation, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages across 2 common predictive modeling use cases: classification (mortality) and regression (length of stay). We aimed to provide readers with reproducible notebooks and best practices for modeling with electronic health care data. We also described sets of useful recommendations as we demonstrated that nested cross-validation reduces optimistic bias but comes with additional computational challenges. This tutorial might improve the community's understanding of these important methods while catalyzing the modeling community to apply these guides directly in their work using the published code.

Sequential autoencoders for feature engineering and pretraining in major depressive disorder risk prediction.

Objectives: We evaluated autoencoders as a feature engineering and pretraining technique to improve major depressive disorder (MDD) prognostic risk prediction. Autoencoders can represent temporal feature relationships not identified by aggregate features. The predictive performance of autoencoders of multiple sequential structures was evaluated as feature engineering and pretraining strategies on an array of prediction tasks and compared to a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) and random forests as a benchmark. Materials and Methods: We study MDD patients from Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Autoencoder models with Attention and long-short-term memory (LSTM) layers were trained to create latent representations of the input data. Predictive performance was evaluated temporally by fitting random forest models to predict future outcomes with engineered features as input and using autoencoder weights to initialize neural network layers. We evaluated area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) trends and variation over the study population's treatment course. Results: The pretrained LSTM model improved predictive performance over pretrained Attention models and benchmarks in 3 of 4 outcomes including self-harm/suicide attempt (AUPRCs, LSTM pretrained = 0.012, Attention pretrained = 0.010, RBM = 0.009, random forest = 0.005). The use of autoencoders for feature engineering had varied results, with benchmarks outperforming LSTM and Attention encodings on the self-harm/suicide attempt outcome (AUPRCs, LSTM encodings = 0.003, Attention encodings = 0.004, RBM = 0.009, random forest = 0.005). Discussion: Improvement in prediction resulting from pretraining has the potential for increased clinical impact of MDD risk models. We did not find evidence that the use of temporal feature encodings was additive to predictive performance in the study population. This suggests that predictive information retained by model weights may be lost during encoding. LSTM pretrained model predictive performance is shown to be clinically useful and improves over state-of-the-art predictors in the MDD phenotype. LSTM model performance warrants consideration of use in future related studies. Conclusion: LSTM models with pretrained weights from autoencoders were able to outperform the benchmark and a pretrained Attention model. Future researchers developing risk models in MDD may benefit from the use of LSTM autoencoder pretrained weights.

Characterization of Adult Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder that Use Patient Portal.

Patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) access healthcare frequently, yet little is known about their interactions with patient portals. To describe adults with ASD using patient portal, we conducted regression analyses of visit history, demographics, co-occurring conditions and diagnoses, and patient portal use to determine factors most indicative of whether a patient 1) has sent at least one message (via patient or proxy) and 2) has at least one message sent on their behalf via a proxy account after they turned 18 years old. The 2,412-person cohort had 996 (41.3%) patients who had sent at least one message on their account with 129 (5.3%) of patients having at least one proxy message. This study found that adults with ASD are less likely to use messaging functionality and more likely to have a message sent via proxy than other patient populations. Comorbid mental illness was correlated with using messaging functionality.

Using Natural Language Processing to Predict Fatal Drug Overdose From Autopsy Narrative Text: Algorithm Development and Validation Study.

BACKGROUND: Fatal drug overdose surveillance informs prevention but is often delayed because of autopsy report processing and death certificate coding. Autopsy reports contain narrative text describing scene evidence and medical history (similar to preliminary death scene investigation reports) and may serve as early data sources for identifying fatal drug overdoses. To facilitate timely fatal overdose reporting, natural language processing was applied to narrative texts from autopsies. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop a natural language processing-based model that predicts the likelihood that an autopsy report narrative describes an accidental or undetermined fatal drug overdose. METHODS: Autopsy reports of all manners of death (2019-2021) were obtained from the Tennessee Office of the State Chief Medical Examiner. The text was extracted from autopsy reports (PDFs) using optical character recognition. Three common narrative text sections were identified, concatenated, and preprocessed (bag-of-words) using term frequency-inverse document frequency scoring. Logistic regression, support vector machine (SVM), random forest, and gradient boosted tree classifiers were developed and validated. Models were trained and calibrated using autopsies from 2019 to 2020 and tested using those from 2021. Model discrimination was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic, precision, recall, F1-score, and F2-score (prioritizes recall over precision). Calibration was performed using logistic regression (Platt scaling) and evaluated using the Spiegelhalter z test. Shapley additive explanations values were generated for models compatible with this method. In a post hoc subgroup analysis of the random forest classifier, model discrimination was evaluated by forensic center, race, age, sex, and education level. RESULTS: A total of 17,342 autopsies (n=5934, 34.22% cases) were used for model development and validation. The training set included 10,215 autopsies (n=3342, 32.72% cases), the calibration set included 538 autopsies (n=183, 34.01% cases), and the test set included 6589 autopsies (n=2409, 36.56% cases). The vocabulary set contained 4002 terms. All models showed excellent performance (area under the receiver operating characteristic ≥0.95, precision ≥0.94, recall ≥0.92, F1-score ≥0.94, and F2-score ≥0.92). The SVM and random forest classifiers achieved the highest F2-scores (0.948 and 0.947, respectively). The logistic regression and random forest were calibrated (P=.95 and P=.85, respectively), whereas the SVM and gradient boosted tree classifiers were miscalibrated (P=.03 and P<.001, respectively). "Fentanyl" and "accident" had the highest Shapley additive explanations values. Post hoc subgroup analyses revealed lower F2-scores for autopsies from forensic centers D and E. Lower F2-score were observed for the American Indian, Asian, ≤14 years, and ≥65 years subgroups, but larger sample sizes are needed to validate these findings. CONCLUSIONS: The random forest classifier may be suitable for identifying potential accidental and undetermined fatal overdose autopsies. Further validation studies should be conducted to ensure early detection of accidental and undetermined fatal drug overdoses across all subgroups.

Evaluation of the Risk Identification for Suicide and Enhanced Care Model in a Native American Community.

Importance: There are many prognostic models of suicide risk, but few have been prospectively evaluated, and none has been developed specifically for Native American populations. Objective: To prospectively validate a statistical risk model implemented in a community setting and evaluate whether use of this model was associated with improved reach of evidence-based care and reduced subsequent suicide-related behavior among high-risk individuals. Design, Setting, and Participants: This prognostic study, done in partnership with the White Mountain Apache Tribe, used data collected by the Apache Celebrating Life program for adults aged 25 years or older identified as at risk for suicide and/or self-harm from January 1, 2017, through August 31, 2022. Data were divided into 2 cohorts: (1) individuals and suicide-related events from the period prior to suicide risk alerts being active (February 29, 2020) and (2) individuals and events from the time after alerts were activated. Main Outcomes and Measures: Aim 1 focused on a prospective validation of the risk model in cohort 1. Aim 2 compared the odds of repeated suicide-related events and the reach of brief contact interventions among high-risk cases between cohort 2 and cohort 1. Results: Across both cohorts, a total of 400 individuals identified as at risk for suicide and/or self-harm (mean [SD] age, 36.5 [10.3] years; 210 females [52.5%]) had 781 suicide-related events. Cohort 1 included 256 individuals with index events prior to active notifications. Most index events (134 [52.5%]) were for binge substance use, followed by 101 (39.6%) for suicidal ideation, 28 (11.0%) for a suicide attempt, and 10 (3.9%) for self-injury. Among these individuals, 102 (39.5%) had subsequent suicidal behaviors. In cohort 1, the majority (220 [86.3%]) were classified as low risk, and 35 individuals (13.3%) were classified as high risk for suicidal attempt or death in the 12 months after their index event. Cohort 2 included 144 individuals with index events after notifications were activated. For aim 1, those classified as high risk had a greater odds of subsequent suicide-related events compared with those classified as low risk (odds ratio [OR], 3.47; 95% CI, 1.53-7.86; P = .003; area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.65). For aim 2, which included 57 individuals classified as high risk across both cohorts, during the time when alerts were inactive, high-risk individuals were more likely to have subsequent suicidal behaviors compared with when alerts were active (OR, 9.14; 95% CI, 1.85-45.29; P = .007). Before the active alerts, only 1 of 35 (2.9%) individuals classified as high risk received a wellness check; after the alerts were activated, 11 of 22 (50.0%) individuals classified as high risk received 1 or more wellness checks. Conclusions and Relevance: This study showed that a statistical model and associated care system developed in partnership with the White Mountain Apache Tribe enhanced identification of individuals at high risk for suicide and was associated with a reduced risk for subsequent suicidal behaviors and increased reach of care.