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Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

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Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#11

Post by tanaros »

simonw wrote: post #3

I wouldn't trust a non-radiologist to safely interpret the results of an AI model for radiology, no matter how well that model performs in benchmarks. Similar to how a model that can do "PhD-level research" is of little use to me if I don't have my own PhD in the topic area it's researching for me, because how am I supposed to analyze a 20 page research report and figure out if it's credible or not?

The notion of “PhD-level research” is too vague to be useful anyways. Is it equivalent to a preprint, a poster, a workshop paper, a conference paper, a journal submission, or a book? Is it expected to pass peer review in a prestigious venue, a mid-tier venue, or simply any venue at all?

There’s wildly varying levels of quality among these options, even though they could all reasonably be called “PhD-level research.”

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#12

Post by charv »

I find the radiologist use case an illuminating one for the adoption of AI across business today. My takeaway is that when the tools get better, radiologists aren't replaced, but take up other important tasks that sometimes become second nature when reads (unassisted) are the primary goal.

  In particular, doctors appear to defer excessively to assistive AI tools in clinical settings in a way that they do not in lab settings. They did this even with much more primitive tools than we have today... The gap was largest when computer aids failed to recognize the malignancy itself; many doctors seemed to treat an absence of prompts as reassurance that a film was clean
Reminds me of the "slop" discussions happening right now. When the tools seem good, but aren't, we develop a reliance to false negatives, e.g. text that clearly "feels" written by a GPT model.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#13

Post by jasonhong »

In May earlier this year, the New York Times had a similar article about AI not replacing radiologists: https://archive.is/cw1Zt

It has similar insights, and good comments from doctors and from Hinton:

“It can augment, assist and quantify, but I am not in a place where I give up interpretive conclusions to the technology.”

“Five years from now, it will be malpractice not to use A.I.,” he said. “But it will be humans and A.I. working together.”

Dr. Hinton agrees. In retrospect, he believes he spoke too broadly in 2016, he said in an email. He didn’t make clear that he was speaking purely about image analysis, and was wrong on timing but not the direction, he added.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#14

Post by catoc »

maz1b wrote: post #8

As a doctor and full stack engineer, I would never go into radiology or seek further training in it. (obviously) AI is going to augment radiologists first, and eventually, it will start to replace them. And existing radiologists will transition into stuff like interventional radiology or whatever new areas will come into the picture in the future.

As a doctor and full stack engineer you’d have a perfect future ahead of you in radiology - the profession will not go away, but will need doctors who can bridge the full medical-tech range

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#15

Post by donnfelker »

Oh yes it is. I have worked on projects where highly trained specialized doctors have helped train the models (or trained them themselves) to catch random very difficult to notice conditions via radiology. Some of these systems are deployed at different hospitals and medical facilities around the country. The radiologist still does there job, but some odd, random hard to notice conditions, AI is a literal life saver. For example, pancreas divisum, a abnormality in the way the pancreas ducts fail to fuse/etc can cause all kinds of insane issues. But its not something most people know about or look for. AI can pick that up in a second. It can then alert the radiologist of an abnormality and they can then verify. It's enhacing the capabilties of radiologists.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#16

Post by donnfelker »

maz1b wrote: post #8

As a doctor and full stack engineer, I would never go into radiology or seek further training in it. (obviously) AI is going to augment radiologists first, and eventually, it will start to replace them. And existing radiologists will transition into stuff like interventional radiology or whatever new areas will come into the picture in the future.

There's a number of you (engineer + doctor), though quite rare. I have a few friends who are engineers as well as doctors. You're like unicorns in your field. The Neo and Morpheus of the medical industry - you can see things and understand things that most people cant in your typical field (medicine). Kudos to you!

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#17

Post by random9749832 »

donnfelker wrote: post #15

Oh yes it is. I have worked on projects where highly trained specialized doctors have helped train the models (or trained them themselves) to catch random very difficult to notice conditions via radiology. Some of these systems are deployed at different hospitals and medical facilities around the country. The radiologist still does there job, but some odd, random hard to notice conditions, AI is a literal life saver.…

>Oh yes it is.

>It's enhacing the capabilties of radiologists.

So it is not replacing radiologists?

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#18

Post by kstrauser »

maz1b wrote: post #8

As a doctor and full stack engineer, I would never go into radiology or seek further training in it. (obviously) AI is going to augment radiologists first, and eventually, it will start to replace them. And existing radiologists will transition into stuff like interventional radiology or whatever new areas will come into the picture in the future.

What’s your take on pharmacists? To my naive eyes, that seems like a certainty for replacement. What extra value does human judgement bring to their work?

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#19

Post by lomase »

lnenad wrote: post #7
lomase wrote: post #5

In 2016, Geoffrey Hinton – computer scientist and Turing Award winner – declared that ‘people should stop training radiologists now’. If we had followed every AI evengelist sugestion the world would have collapsed.

Let's assume the last person that entered their radiologist training started then and the training lasts 5 years. At the end of their training the year is 2021 and they are around 31. So that means they will practice medicine for cca 30 years which would put the calendar at around 2051. I'd wager in 25 years we'd get there so I think his opinion still has a large percentage of being correct.

Why you write 2021? It clearly says 2016.

I mean if you change the data to fit your argument you will always make it look correct.

Lets assume we stop in 2016 like he said, where do we get the 1000 radiologist the US needs a year?

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#20

Post by cfu28 »

maz1b wrote: post #8

As a doctor and full stack engineer, I would never go into radiology or seek further training in it. (obviously) AI is going to augment radiologists first, and eventually, it will start to replace them. And existing radiologists will transition into stuff like interventional radiology or whatever new areas will come into the picture in the future.

I feel like I keep running into your comments on HN. There are dozens of us!
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