Skip to main content

Research with a destination | A question to investigate

The interesting question is what the person does next.

An AI output can be fluent, plausible and wrong. Our research interest extends beyond model performance to the professional using it: what they notice, challenge, accept and carry into a medicines decision.

Film credits

Look at reliance, not just satisfaction.

A user may like a tool because its answer is quick and easy to read. That does not establish whether it improves judgement. We propose studying how professional reviewers respond to supported, incomplete and misleading outputs in a controlled setting. The central question is whether the interaction helps a person discriminate between an answer they can use, an answer requiring correction and a question that should be escalated or left unresolved.

Give the task a recognisable setting.

An initial study could use authorised, non-patient-specific organisational evidence tasks with pharmacy or medicines reviewers. The inputs would include source materials, a defined question and a realistic responsibility for the final review. We would avoid using a broad chat demonstration as a substitute for a work task. Participants should understand what they are being asked to decide and what the system is intended to support before any outcomes are measured.

Vary the information that changes behaviour.

Candidate conditions could compare outputs with source links, explicit uncertainty or a request to examine a conflicting finding. The study would ask whether these features alter checking and escalation, not simply whether they are visible. Deliberately flawed examples, if ethically and methodologically appropriate, would be confined to a controlled evaluation with a suitable debrief. No live care decision should depend on a planted error or an unassessed experimental interface.

Use a comparator that includes human expertise.

The existing unaided or differently supported review process would provide the comparison. Experience, familiarity with the topic and time pressure may change how people rely on assistance, so these factors would be recorded. Useful measures could include detection of consequential errors, correction quality, unsupported acceptance and total task effort. A faster answer with worse error detection would not be reported as an overall improvement merely because the average completion time fell.

A public decision brief | An illustrative example

Open the question.
Inspect the reasoning.

Choose a business question, then look beneath its claim. See what a public source supports, what depends on the local setting and what a useful next step could be.

An academic or development team examining the next experiment after a published model comparison.

What does this result allow us to ask next?

A promising figure can sharpen a research question. Its value depends on keeping the model, observation and next hypothesis distinct.

A proposition to investigate

A clearer question can be a useful output.

An evidence brief could help a team distinguish a published observation from the experiment needed to investigate translation. The proposed value is a more precise comparison and an explicit evidence gap. It does not turn an external model result into a clinical claim or a NEUVIOR discovery.

This is a constructed research-planning question, not an agreed study or product-development result.

What the next brief would contain

A decision someone
can commission.

The decision
Whether a specific follow-on question has a credible experimental comparison.
The comparator
A scientifically justified model or condition relevant to the proposed hypothesis.
The evidence
Full methods, model relevance, measurements, replication and a feasible authorised protocol.
Stop or redesign
Stop or redesign if the proposed model cannot answer the question or the required work is not feasible.

Constructed public example | Not PHARMORIS-generated software output or a measured customer result.

Keep this example brief

Examine the disagreement behind the score.

We want to understand why a reviewer accepted an output, what caused a second look and which interface cues created misplaced confidence. Short interviews and observed task behaviour could help explain quantitative results. The proposed deliverable would pair outcome measures with concrete examples of successful challenge and inappropriate reliance. That gives designers and professional partners a practical basis for improving the interaction rather than a leaderboard number detached from the work.

Set the assurance question around the actual purpose.

NIST's AI Risk Management Framework supplies voluntary risk-management context (NIST, 2023). NHS DTAC supplies separate buyer-assurance context for relevant digital health technologies (NHS England, n.d.). Neither reference establishes that PHARMORIS has passed an assessment. The proposed study's intended purpose, data use, professional roles and potential consequences would determine its governance and assurance work. Academic independence and a clear record of system versions would be important if the findings are to remain interpretable.

Make the next decision a design decision.

A bounded first collaboration would select one review task and a small number of interaction conditions, then agree meaningful failure thresholds before collecting results. We would proceed only if support helps appropriate checking without unacceptable burden or unsafe reliance. Persistent consequential errors, misleading confidence or an inability to separate interface effects from participant familiarity would trigger redesign or a stop. The aim is evidence for a better professional experience, not a claim that oversight solves every AI risk.

The interaction should also make disagreement usable. A reviewer could be asked to explain why they rejected an output and what evidence would change their position. Examining those explanations would help distinguish productive challenge from confusion, while revealing whether an apparently reassuring source link was actually consulted or merely treated as a signal of authority.

Sources and context

NIST (2023) AI Risk Management Framework. Available at: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework (Accessed: 14 October 2026).

NHS England (n.d.) Digital Technology Assessment Criteria. Available at: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/digital-technology-assessment-criteria-dtac (Accessed: 14 October 2026).

Another useful angle.

  • Evidence review quality

    Explore a proposed medicines evidence study comparing source fidelity, review quality and total checking effort, with a clear decision for research partners.

  • Industrial measurement research

    Examine whether an industrial measurement can support a medicines process decision, including reference methods, uncertainty, operating conditions and full effort.

  • Reproducible medicines analysis

    Explore reproducible medicines analysis that connects source data, calculation and interpretation, giving research partners a result they can check and update.

NEWSPerspectives & features