FairLogue: A Toolkit for Intersectional Fairness Analysis in Clinical Machine Learning Models

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04858v1
• Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:03:03 GMT
• Title: FairLogue: A Toolkit for Intersectional Fairness Analysis in Clinical Machine Learning Models
• Abstract summary: Algorithmic fairness is essential for equitable and trustworthy machine learning in healthcare.<n>This study introduces Fairlogue, a toolkit designed to operationalize intersectional fairness assessment in observational and counterfactual contexts.
• Score: 0.5951287048890108
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Objective: Algorithmic fairness is essential for equitable and trustworthy machine learning in healthcare. Most fairness tools emphasize single-axis demographic comparisons and may miss compounded disparities affecting intersectional populations. This study introduces Fairlogue, a toolkit designed to operationalize intersectional fairness assessment in observational and counterfactual contexts within clinical settings. Methods: Fairlogue is a Python-based toolkit composed of three components: 1) an observational framework extending demographic parity, equalized odds, and equal opportunity difference to intersectional populations; 2) a counterfactual framework evaluating fairness under treatment-based contexts; and 3) a generalized counterfactual framework assessing fairness under interventions on intersectional group membership. The toolkit was evaluated using electronic health record data from the All of Us Controlled Tier V8 dataset in a glaucoma surgery prediction task using logistic regression with race and gender as protected attributes. Results: Observational analysis identified substantial intersectional disparities despite moderate model performance (AUROC = 0.709; accuracy = 0.651). Intersectional evaluation revealed larger fairness gaps than single-axis analyses, including demographic parity differences of 0.20 and equalized odds true positive and false positive rate gaps of 0.33 and 0.15, respectively. Counterfactual analysis using permutation-based null distributions produced unfairness ("u-value") estimates near zero, suggesting observed disparities were consistent with chance after conditioning on covariates. Conclusion: Fairlogue provides a modular toolkit integrating observational and counterfactual methods for quantifying and evaluating intersectional bias in clinical machine learning workflows.

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