Implement automated safety gates that block deployment of clinical AI models that don’t meet safety thresholds. Never ship a model that misses red flags.
In healthcare AI, “move fast and break things” can harm patients. Safety gates create hard blocks that prevent unsafe models from reaching production, regardless of business pressure or deployment schedules.
Zero Critical Failures
Block any model that misses a single critical red flag in evaluation.
Regression Prevention
Ensure new versions don’t perform worse than the current production model.
Audit Trail
Document every deployment decision for regulatory compliance.
Automated Enforcement
Gates run automatically in CI/CD - no human can bypass them.
Establish minimum acceptable performance levels for your clinical AI:
safety_thresholds.py
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from rubric import Rubric, SafetyGateclient = Rubric(api_key="your-api-key")# Define safety gate configurationsafety_gate = client.safety_gates.create( name="triage-production-gate", project="patient-triage", # Hard blocks - ANY failure stops deployment critical_thresholds={ # Zero tolerance for missing life-threatening conditions "critical_red_flag_miss_rate": { "max": 0.0, # 0% - cannot miss ANY critical red flags "description": "Missed chest pain with radiation, stroke symptoms, etc." }, # Zero tolerance for dangerous under-triage "critical_undertriage_rate": { "max": 0.0, # Cannot send emergencies home "description": "Emergent cases triaged as routine" }, # Zero tolerance for medication hallucinations "medication_hallucination_count": { "max": 0, # Absolute zero "description": "Fabricated medications in recommendations" } }, # Minimum thresholds - must meet ALL to pass minimum_thresholds={ "triage_accuracy": { "min": 85.0, "description": "Overall triage classification accuracy" }, "safety_score": { "min": 95.0, "description": "Red flag detection and escalation" }, "guideline_compliance": { "min": 80.0, "description": "Adherence to clinical protocols" }, "sensitivity_chest_pain": { "min": 98.0, "description": "Detection rate for cardiac symptoms" }, "sensitivity_stroke": { "min": 99.0, "description": "Detection rate for stroke symptoms" }, "sensitivity_pediatric_fever": { "min": 95.0, "description": "Detection rate for high-risk pediatric fever" } }, # Regression thresholds - compare to production baseline regression_thresholds={ "triage_accuracy": { "max_decrease": 2.0, # Cannot drop more than 2% "compare_to": "production" }, "safety_score": { "max_decrease": 0.0, # Cannot decrease at all "compare_to": "production" } }, # Statistical significance requirements statistical_requirements={ "min_sample_size": 500, "confidence_level": 0.95, "require_significant_improvement": False # Don't require improvement, just no regression })
Critical Thresholds Are Non-Negotiable: Critical thresholds should be set to zero tolerance for life-threatening failures. These cannot be overridden by anyone - not engineers, not managers, not executives. If a model fails a critical threshold, it does not ship.
When a gate fails, investigate the specific cases that caused the failure:
investigate_failures.py
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# Get detailed failure analysisfailures = client.safety_gates.get_failures(gate_result.id)print(f"Total Failures: {len(failures)}")print()# Group by failure typefor failure_type, cases in failures.group_by("failure_type").items(): print(f"\n{failure_type.upper()} ({len(cases)} cases):") print("-" * 50) for case in cases[:3]: # Show first 3 print(f"Sample ID: {case.sample_id}") print(f"Input: {case.input[:100]}...") print(f"Expected: {case.expected_triage}") print(f"Predicted: {case.predicted_triage}") print(f"Missed Red Flags: {case.missed_red_flags}") print()# Export failures for detailed reviewclient.safety_gates.export_failures( gate_result.id, format="csv", destination="s3://safety-reviews/gate-failures-v2.4.1.csv")# Route critical failures for human reviewcritical_failures = [f for f in failures if f.severity == "critical"]for failure in critical_failures: client.reviews.create( sample_id=failure.sample_id, priority="urgent", reason=f"Safety gate failure: {failure.failure_type}", required_reviewer_type="physician" )
Environment Protection: Configure GitHub environment protection rules to require the safety-gate job to pass before the deploy job can run. This provides an additional layer of protection against accidental deployments.
In rare cases, you may need to deploy despite a gate failure. This requires documented approval and creates a permanent audit record:
emergency_override.py
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# Emergency override (requires special permissions)override = client.safety_gates.request_override( gate_result_id=gate_result.id, # Justification is required justification={ "reason": "Critical production bug fix - current version crashes on 5% of calls", "risk_assessment": "New version has 0.4% red flag miss rate vs 0.0% threshold, " "but current version is completely non-functional for affected users", "mitigation_plan": "Deploy with increased human review rate (100% for 24h), " "hotfix for red flag detection in progress", "rollback_plan": "Immediate rollback if any critical incident reported" }, # Required approvers (must be pre-configured) requested_approvers=[ "chief_medical_officer", "head_of_engineering", "head_of_compliance" ])print(f"Override Request ID: {override.id}")print(f"Status: {override.status}") # PENDING_APPROVALprint(f"Required Approvals: {override.required_approvals}")print(f"Current Approvals: {override.current_approvals}")# Approvers receive notification and must approve in dashboard# Once approved, deployment is unblocked but permanently flagged
Override Audit Trail: All override requests and approvals are permanently logged and cannot be deleted. This audit trail is included in regulatory exports and compliance reports. Overrides should be extremely rare - more than 1-2 per year suggests your thresholds may need recalibration.