Yale Center for Medical Informatics Special Lecture: "Cancer Risk Algorithms and their Interaction with Clinical Judgment"

Improving the early diagnosis of cancer is a national priority in the UK, where an urgent referral pathway for suspected cancer has been instituted in primary care – and found to be associated with lower cancer mortality. High variability in the use of this pathway has led to the introduction of risk calculators, which, nevertheless, are not used routinely. The received wisdom is that clinicians are reluctant to use algorithms and trust their intuition more. Concepts of ‘advice discounting’ and ‘algorithm aversion’ also cast doubt on the potential of algorithms to improve clinical judgment.

From Imperial College London, Olga Kostopoulou PhD will present her programme of research, funded by Cancer Research UK, aims to investigate how cancer risk calculators (algorithms) influence family physicians’ intuitive risk assessments and referral decisions and identify ways to optimize their presentation and uptake. She will present in detail results from a recent study that are more optimistic than the previous literature and point to the potential for using risk algorithms as training tools beyond their role in decision support.

Zoom Link https://zoom.us/j/97893760023?pwd=bjFSTEF2N1dkckowVlZ4V1VvSUtIdz09

Meeting ID: 978 9376 0023 Passcode: 854849