The Authors Respond to Reader Comment Regarding Machine Learning Models to Detect Opioid Misuse in Emergency Department Patients at Triage
Year Published: 2026
Authors: Neeraj Chhabra, MD, MSCR, Usman Shahid, MD, Natalie Parde, PhD, Majid Afshar, MD, MSCR, Niranjan S. Karnik, MD, PhD, DFAPA, DFAACAP
This article is a response to commentary on the authors’ previous work regarding clinical decision support models for opioid misuse detection in emergency departments. The authors discuss the challenges of translating proof-of-concept models into real-world clinical practice, emphasizing that successful implementation requires balancing model performance with ethical considerations, resource allocation, and patient-oriented outcomes rather than focusing solely on statistical metrics .