Glossary
Specificity
Also called: true negative rate
The proportion of patients who do not have the condition that the test correctly identifies as negative.
Specificity answers: of everyone without the disease, how many did the test correctly clear. Low specificity means many false alarms, which in a screening context means unnecessary follow-up imaging, biopsies, and patient anxiety.
Where This Gets Misread
Sensitivity and specificity trade against each other through the decision threshold, and the threshold a vendor reports is a choice, not a property of the model. Ask what threshold the quoted figures assume and whether it is the one shipped.