The Clinician Model Card: development and evaluation of clinician-centered documentation for AI-based clinical decision support

Abstract AI documentation frameworks remain poorly designed for point-of-care use, leaving clinicians without actionable information on how to use clinical AI models when they need it most. We developed the Clinician Model Card, an interactive, clinician-centered documentation tool, and evaluated it in a sequential exploratory mixed-methods study: interviews with 12 physicians informed iterative co-design, evaluated in a national survey of 129 physicians across Germany. The tool was well-received: 84% agreed it should be routinely available, and 66% considered its content relevant to clinical decision-making. Yet comprehensibility of statistical performance metrics remained poor despite targeted interventions: only 32% understood the Validation & Performance section well, and fewer than 54% correctly interpreted AUROC or PPV, with AI literacy as strong predictor of comprehension (ρ = 0.59). We propose empirically derived design principles for clinician-centered AI documentation. Effective AI transparency requires not only clinician-friendly design and workflow integration, but sustained investment in AI literacy.