Designing AI-Based Work Processes: How the Timing of AI Advice Affects Diagnostic Decision Making
Prof. Hock Hai TEO
Provost’s Chair Professor of Information Systems
Department of Information Systems at the School of Computing
National University of Singapore
Although clinical artificial intelligence (AI) systems can augment medical diagnosis decisions by providing competent second opinions, how to effectively integrate AI into routine diagnostic processes, such as when to present AI advice to human physicians, remains largely unexplored. Therefore, our research experimentally examines how the timing of AI advice affects diagnostic decision making using a think-aloud approach. Physicians perform medical diagnoses under three conditions: ex post advice (AI advice given after an initial diagnosis), ex ante advice (AI advice given concurrently with clinical information), and a control condition (no AI advice). Our results indicate that the timing of AI advice significantly affects diagnostic accuracy and calibration, with the ex post advice condition yielding the best performance and the control condition the worst. We then conduct several analyses to disentangle the underlying mechanism. We reveal that the superior diagnostic quality in the ex post advice condition can be attributed to more thorough clinical information processing and more active cognitive engagement with AI’s reasoning rationale. As a result, participants in the ex post advice condition are more capable of differentiating correct from incorrect AI advice than those in the ex ante advice condition. Additionally, they benefit more from high-quality AI advice that contradicts their initial diagnoses. To gain additional insights, we estimate the heterogeneous treatment effects based on physician and clinical case characteristics. Our findings underscore the importance of presenting AI advice at appropriate times during routine diagnostic processes to achieve successful decision augmentation with AI advice.
Professor Hock-Hai Teo is Provost’s Chair Professor of Information Systems at the National University of Singapore and currently holds the appointment of Director of Humanities and Social Science Research in the Office of the Deputy President (Research and Technology). He previously served as Vice-Dean (Corporate Communications) in the School of Computing and as Head of the Department of Information Systems. From August 2008 to June 2015, he led the department through a period of significant growth, strengthening its standing and international reputation in Information Systems and Analytics. He also played a pivotal role in establishing the Strategic Technology Management Institute and the Centre for Health Informatics to support industry engagement and executive education, as well as in launching one of the world’s early undergraduate Business Analytics degree programmes. Professor Teo’s research spans health informatics, open innovation, and IT artefacts that enhance decision-making, health, and educational outcomes. He has published in many of the field’s leading journals, served on the editorial boards of prominent academic outlets, and received numerous honours, including the AIS Fellow award and the MIS Quarterly Reviewer of the Year Award.
