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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

#21

Post by bluGill »

random9749832 wrote: post #17
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?

Not yet. Time will tell but they have a long way to go if they ever do. They are useful tools now.

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

#22

Post by matwood »

random9749832 wrote: post #17
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?

I guess we have to define 'replace' then. If we need fewer radiologists, does that count as replacing? IDK.

It seems that with AI in particular, many operate with 0/1 thinking in that it can only be useless or take over the world with nothing in between.

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

#23

Post by [deleted] »

djoldman wrote: post #10

> Three things explain this. First,... Second, attempts to give models more tasks have run into legal hurdles: regulators and medical insurers so far are reluctant to approve or cover fully autonomous radiology models. Third, even when they do diagnose accurately, models replace only a small share of a radiologist’s job. Human radiologists spend a minority of their time on diagnostics and the majority on other activi…

[deleted]

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

#24

Post by _lyxd »

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.…

what's the end game here, have a slew of of finetuned models for these varying edgecases?

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

#25

Post by [deleted] »

donnfelker wrote: post #16
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!

[deleted]

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

#26

Post by addcommitpush »

djoldman wrote: post #10

> Three things explain this. First,... Second, attempts to give models more tasks have run into legal hurdles: regulators and medical insurers so far are reluctant to approve or cover fully autonomous radiology models. Third, even when they do diagnose accurately, models replace only a small share of a radiologist’s job. Human radiologists spend a minority of their time on diagnostics and the majority on other activi…

If they had absolute perfect performance at zero cost, you would not need a radiologist.

The current "workflow" is primary care physician (or specialist) -> radiology tech that actually does the measurement thing -> radiologist for interpretation/diagnosis -> primary care physician (or specialist) for treatment.

If you have perfect diagnosis, it could be primary care physician (or specialist) -> radiology tech -> ML model for interpretation -> primary care physician (or specialist.

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

#27

Post by theOGognf »

This article is pretty good. My current work is transitioning CV models in a large, local hospital system to a more unified deployment system, and much of the content aligns with conversations we have with providers, operations, etc..

I think the part that says models will reduce time to complete tasks and allow providers to focus on other tasks is on point in particular. For one CV task, we’re only saving on average <30min of work per study, so it isn’t massive savings from a provider’s perspective. But scaled across the whole hospital, it’s huge savings

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

#28

Post by padjo »

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.

So all the current radiologists are going to live until 2051?

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

#29

Post by jonas21 »

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.

People love to bring this up, and it was a silly thing to say -- particularly since he didn't seem to understand that radiologists only spend a small part of their time reading scans.

But he said it in the context of a Q&A session that happened to be recorded. Unless you're a skilled politician who can give answers without actually saying anything, you're going to say silly things once in a while in unscripted settings.

Besides that, I'd hardly call Geoffrey Hinton an AI evangelist. He's more on the AI doomer side of the fence.

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

#30

Post by ViktorRay »

One thing people aren't talking about is liability.

At the end of the day if the radiologist makes an error the radiologist gets sued.

If AI replaces the radiologist then it is OpenAI or some other AI company that will get sued each and every time the AI model makes a mistake. No AI company wants to be on the hook for that.

So what will happen? Simple. AI will always remain just a tool to assist doctors. But there will always be a disclaimer attached to the output saying that ultimately the radiologist should use his or her judgement. And then the liability would remain with the human not the AI company.

Maybe AI will "replace" radiologists in very poor countries where people may not have had access to radiologists in the first place. In some places in the world it is cheap to get an xray but still can be expensive to pay someone to interpret it. But in the United States the fear of malpractice will mean radiologists never go away.

EDIT: I know the article mentions liability but it mentions it as just one reason among many. My contention is that liability will be the fundamental reason radiologists are never replaced regardless of how good the AI systems get. This applies to other specialities too.

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