A Data-Driven Algorithm to Recommend Initial Clinical Workup for Outpatient Specialty Referral: Algorithm Development and Validation Using Electronic Health Record Data and Expert Surveys.

 An item association-based recommender algorithm can predict appropriate specialists' workup orders with high discriminatory accuracy. This could support future clinical decision support tools to increase effectiveness and access to specialty referrals. Our study demonstrates important first steps toward a data-driven paradigm for outpatient specialty consultation with a tier of automated recommendations that proactively enable initial workup that would otherwise be delayed by awaiting an in-person visit.