ArticleNPJ digital medicine2026
Clarifying validation terminologies in healthcare.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
20 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Validation is a cornerstone of reliability and trust in diagnostics, yet discipline-specific assumptions and unspoken contextual differences often lead to miscommunication, misalignment, and avoidable delays. As AI/ML becomes more integrated into healthcare, there is a growing necessity to re-examine how the term validation is used and understood. We highlight inconsistencies in the use of the term validation through an analysis of 94 themes across five domains, including Communication Science (n = 12), AI/ML (n = 26), Clinical and Laboratory Practice (n = 19), Regulatory Science (n = 22), and Business (n = 15). We emphasize how persistent reliance on domain-specific implied definitions impedes interdisciplinary alignment. Rather than advocating for a single definition, we derived five consensus proposals that collectively advocate for more specific and context-aware additions to the term validation to support clarity, reliability, and compliance across disciplines. Our goal is to support clearer communication and provide useful strategies that inform the development, regulation, and use of digital health technologies.
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.