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Main Authors: Chandrasekaran, Anuradha, Zikos, Dimitrios, Mete, Mutlu, Pang, Alan, Lund, Brady D., Sha, Kewei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01189
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author Chandrasekaran, Anuradha
Zikos, Dimitrios
Mete, Mutlu
Pang, Alan
Lund, Brady D.
Sha, Kewei
author_facet Chandrasekaran, Anuradha
Zikos, Dimitrios
Mete, Mutlu
Pang, Alan
Lund, Brady D.
Sha, Kewei
contents Clinical AI adoption is hindered by the black-box/grey-box nature of high-performing models, which lack the ontological grounding and narrative transparency required for professional-level explainability. We present NEURON, a neuro-symbolic system designed to enhance both predictive reliability and clinical interpretability. NEURON integrates SNOMED CT ontology-informed structural representations with machine learning models to bridge the gap between raw data and medical nomenclature. To facilitate human-aligned interaction, the system utilizes a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) grounded LLM layer to synthesize SHAP feature attributions and patient-specific clinical notes into coherent, natural-language explanations. Validated on the MIMIC-IV dataset for Acute Heart Failure mortality prediction, NEURON improved the AUC from 0.74-0.77 to 0.84-0.88 and significantly outperformed raw SHAP visualizations in human-aligned metrics (0.85 vs. 0.50). Our results demonstrate that NEURON offers a robust, scalable engineering solution for deploying trustworthy, human-centered connected health applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_01189
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle NEURON: A Neuro-symbolic System for Grounded Clinical Explainability
Chandrasekaran, Anuradha
Zikos, Dimitrios
Mete, Mutlu
Pang, Alan
Lund, Brady D.
Sha, Kewei
Artificial Intelligence
Clinical AI adoption is hindered by the black-box/grey-box nature of high-performing models, which lack the ontological grounding and narrative transparency required for professional-level explainability. We present NEURON, a neuro-symbolic system designed to enhance both predictive reliability and clinical interpretability. NEURON integrates SNOMED CT ontology-informed structural representations with machine learning models to bridge the gap between raw data and medical nomenclature. To facilitate human-aligned interaction, the system utilizes a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) grounded LLM layer to synthesize SHAP feature attributions and patient-specific clinical notes into coherent, natural-language explanations. Validated on the MIMIC-IV dataset for Acute Heart Failure mortality prediction, NEURON improved the AUC from 0.74-0.77 to 0.84-0.88 and significantly outperformed raw SHAP visualizations in human-aligned metrics (0.85 vs. 0.50). Our results demonstrate that NEURON offers a robust, scalable engineering solution for deploying trustworthy, human-centered connected health applications.
title NEURON: A Neuro-symbolic System for Grounded Clinical Explainability
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01189