Seminar Series

2022 - 2023

 Seminar Financed by the TEPREME project

Speaker: Hannes Ullrich (DIW Berlin and U of Copenhagen).

Title: “Machine learning and physician prescribing: a path to reduced antibiotic use”

joint with Michael A. Ribers (DIW Berlin and U of Copenhagen).

Date: Thursday, February 16th at 12h30 (Paris Time).

Abstract: Inefficient human decisions are driven by biases and limited information. The health care sector is one leading example where machine learning is hoped to deliver efficiency gains. Antibiotic resistance constitutes a major challenge to health care systems largely due to human antibiotic overuse. In this paper, we investigate how machine learning provides new opportunities to design decision rules that reduce antibiotic use. We focus on urinary tract infections in primary care which constitute one of the leading causes for antibiotic use. Laboratory testing can diagnose bacterial infections but with considerable delay such that physicians often prescribe prior to attaining diagnostic certainty. Using Danish administrative and laboratory data, we find that machine learning methods are capable of predicting the presence of bacteria out-of-sample and complement physician prescribing. We optimize policy rules which delegate a share of prescription decisions to physicians and base the remaining decisions on machine learning predictions. The policy shows a potential to reduce antibiotic prescribing by 8.4 percent and overprescribing by 20.9 percent without assigning fewer prescriptions to patients with bacterial infections. We f ind that human-algorithm cooperation is essential to achieve efficiency gains.

Here are links to the speaker’s website, the FEELab website and the TEPREME project website:

https://hannesullrich.com/

https://sites.google.com/view/feelabtbs/

https://sites.google.com/view/tepreme/

You are cordially invited to participate to the following seminar of the FEELab, which will take place (ATTENTION UNUSUAL ROOM) in Room 220, Lascrosses building.

For more information, please contact: Anna D’Annunzio a.d-annunzio@tbs-education.fr or Pierre Mella-Barral p.mella-barral@tbs-education.fr