Development and validation of a Multi-Causal investigation and discovery framework for knowledge harmonization (MINDMerge): A case study with acute kidney injury risk factor discovery using electronic medical records.

Objective: Accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments in medicine rely on identifying causality. However, existing causal discovery algorithms often yield inconsistent results due to distinct learning mechanisms. To address this challenge, we introduce MINDMerge, a multi-causal investigation and discovery framework designed to synthesize causal graphs from various algorithms.

Methods: MINDMerge integrates five causal models to reconcile inconsistencies arising from different algorithms. Employing credibility weighting and a novel cycle-breaking mechanism in causal networks, we initially developed and tested MINDMerge using three synthetic networks. Subsequently, we validated its effectiveness in discovering risk factors and predicting acute kidney injury (AKI) using two electronic medical records (EMR) datasets, eICU Collaborative Research Database and MIMIC-III Database. Causal reasoning was employed to analyze the relationships between risk factors and AKI. The identified causal risk factors of AKI were used in building a prediction model, and the prediction model was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) and recall.

Results: Synthetic data experiments demonstrated that our model outperformed significantly in capturing ground-truth network structure compared to other causal models. Application of MINDMerge on real-world data revealed direct connections of pulmonary disease, hypertension, diabetes, x-ray assessment, and BUN with AKI. With the identified variables, AKI risk can be inferred at the individual level based on established BNs and prior information. Compared against existing benchmark models, MINDMerge maintained a higher AUC for AKI prediction in both internal (AUC: 0.832) and external network validations (AUC: 0.861).

Conclusion: MINDMerge can identify causal risk factors of AKI, serving as a valuable diagnostic tool for clinical decision-making and facilitating effective intervention.