Skip to main content

CEP/STICERD Applications Seminars

Thinking versus Doing: Cognitive Capacity, Decision Making and Medical Diagnosis

Ben Handel (University of California, Berkeley)

Monday 11 November 2024 12:00 - 13:30

Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events. Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.

Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.

Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.


About this event

The process of diagnosis in medicine depends on high dimensional, complex belief formation, repeated experimentation and data aggregation from multiple sources (e.g. labs, images, discussions with patients). In this paper we explore the role of point-in-time cognitive capacity in this process. We develop a simple model in which a physician forms priors using cognitive effort followed by an experimental phase in which diagnostic orders are used to assess those priors. This yields simple comparative statics demonstrating the relationship between diagnostic and treatment decisions for a particular patient and the mental bandwidth – cognitive capacity – required for patients other than her. We estimate the model empirically using novel administrative data on the universe of orders, consults and other clinical actions captured in the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) of a large Emergency Department. We exploit the random assignment of patients to physicians to estimate the impact of leave-out patient cognitive requirements on the precision and effort needed for diagnosis, treatment and triage. We find that within doctor, over the course of a shift the complexity of other patients being treated has empirically meaningful and statistically significant impacts on diagnostic orders, clinical consults, documentation time and effort and admissions to the hospital from the ED. We construct an empirical measure of Shannon entropy of beliefs using diagnostic orders made and demonstrate that reductions in cognitive capacity result in more diffuse priors. Finally, we explore a counterfactual allocation in which scheduling takes into account cognitive load and study the impact on resource utilization.

Applications (Applied Micro) Seminars are held on Mondays in term time at 12:00-13:30 in SAL 3.05 in person.

Seminar organiser: Katie Smith

For further information please contact Sadia Ali: s.ali43@lse.ac.uk.

Please use this link to subscribe or unsubscribe to our mailing list (applications).