Machine Learning for Paediatric Related Decision Support in Emergency Care - A UK and Ireland Network Survey Study

This study explores clinician understanding and perception at site lead level towards machine learning (ML) decision support tools for paediatric related emergency care across the UK and Ireland, essential in guiding safe and effective frontline implementation. A cross-sectional online survey was distributed via Paediatric Emergency Research United Kingdom and Ireland (PERUKI) to the lead for digital systems or PERUKI site lead, with one response sought per site. Survey development was in REDCap, and descriptive analysis (counts, percentages) was performed. The response rate was 86.7% (65/75), mostly from England (83.1%). While 80.0% understood Artificial Intelligence, fewer understood advanced concepts such as Deep Learning (32.3%). Most clinicians believed ML will support decision making (83.1%), would be willing to use (87.7%), and the future of decision making is a combination of human and ML (83.1%). Barriers included concerns about bias (61.5%), ML accuracy (56.9%), and inadequate information technology infrastructure (67.7%). Digital leads were more concerned about ML accuracy than non-digital (68.2% vs. 51.2%). Among potential applications, antimicrobial stewardship ranked highest (90.8%), and diagnosis of mental health conditions lowest (24.6%). Strong interest in ML tools for decision support in paediatric emergency care was evident, though concerns about bias, accuracy, and infrastructure must be addressed. Ongoing co-design with clinicians is critical in ensuring these tools are trusted, useful and suited to paediatric emergency care. Targeted education, digital leadership, and strategic investment in infrastructure and governance are essential for the successful adoption and integration of ML in clinical workflows. Author SummaryWithin emergency care we are seeing a rapid growth in the research, development and frontline use of machine learning based tools for decision support, yet very little is known about the intended users understanding, opinions, experience of this technology and supporting structures. With any new technology a greater understanding leads to better adoption and the clinicians who will use these tools should be directly involved in their design, implementation and evaluation to ensure that these tools are clinically relevant and usable in practice. Through our survey of clinical site leads (key drivers, influencing the adoption of ever advancing technology), the findings provide critical insight into what clinicians are most concerned about, their perceptions, understanding, what applications they view as most clinically relevant and their willingness to be involved in future research and development of these tools. The results also revealed many important themes such as infrastructure readiness, trust, explainability, clinical integration, targeted education and human-artificial intelligence collaboration. These findings will contribute to shaping the future of research, development, education, governance and policy within this rapidly growing area.