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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

#111

Post by CamperBob2 »

pjdesno wrote: post #103

The best story I heard about machine learning and radiology was when folks were racing to try to detect COVID in lung X-rays. As I recall, one group had fairly good success, but eventually someone figured out that their data set had images from a low-COVID hospital and a high-COVID hospital, and the lettering on the images used different fonts. The ML model was detecting the font, not the COVID. [a bit of googling la…

Anecdotes like this are informative as far as they go, but they don't say anything at all about the technique itself. Like your story about the fonts used for labeling, essentially all of the drawbacks cited by the article come down to inadequate or inappropriate training methods and data. Fix that, which will not be hard from a purely-technical standpoint, and you will indeed be able to replace radiologists.

Sorry, but in the absence of general limiting principles that rule out such a scenario, that's how it's going to shake out. Visual models are too good at exactly this type of work.

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

#113

Post by quadragenarian »

daxfohl wrote: post #55
roncesvalles wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only came to this thread to say that this is completely untrue: >Human radiologists spend a minority of their time on diagnostics and the majority on other activities, like talking to patients and fellow clinicians. The vast majority of radiologists do nothing other than: come in (or increasingly, stay at home), sit down at a computer, consume a series of medical images while dictating their findings, and then go h…

Are these the ones making 500K? Sounds like more of an assistance job than an MD.

Radiologists are often the ones who are the "brains" of medical diagnosis. The primary care or ER physician gets the patient scanned, and the radiologist scrolls through hundreds if not thousands of images, building a mental model of the insides of the patient's body and then based on the tens of thousands of cases they've reviewed in the past, as well as deep and intimate human anatomical knowledge, attempts to synthesize a medical diagnosis. A human's life and wellness can hinge on an accurate diagnosis from a radiologist.

Does that sounds like an assistance's job?

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

#114

Post by christianqchung »

basisword wrote: post #96
christianqchung wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Waymo, not Robotaxi. Waymo is essentially the self driving vision I had as a kid, and ridership is growing exponentially as they expand. It's also very safe if you believe their statistics[0]. I think there's a saying about overestimating stuff in the short term and underestimating stuff in the long term that seems to apply here, though the radiologist narrative was definitely wrong. [0] https://waymo.com/saf…

It's limited to a few specific markets though. My bet is they aren't going to be able to roll it out widely easily. Probably need to do years of tests in each location to figure out the nuances of the places.

Yeah, I have no idea if Waymo will ever be a rural thing honestly, mostly for economic reasons. I'm skeptical it would get serious suburban usage this decade too. But for major cities where less than 80% of people own cars, test time doesn't seem to be making a difference. They've been expanding in Austin and Atlanta, seemingly with less prep time than Phoenix and San Fran.

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

#115

Post by mandevil »

philwelch wrote: post #89
kklisura wrote: post #54

When Tesla demoed (via video) self-driving in 2016 with a claim "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" and then when they unveiled Semi in 2017 - I tweeted out and honestly thought that trucking industry is changed forever and it doesn't make sense to be starting in trucking industry. It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it o…

For trucking I think self driving can be, in the short term, an opportunity for owner-operators. An owner-operator of a conventional truck can only drive one truck at a time, but you could have multiple self driving trucks in a convoy led by a truck manned by the owner-operator. And there might be an even greater opportunity for this in Europe thanks to the low capacity of European freight rail compared to North Amer…

I used to think this sort of thing too. Then a few years ago I worked with a SWE who had experience in the trucking industry. His take was that most trucking companies are too small scale to benefit from this. The median trucking operation is basically run by the owner's wife in a notebook or spreadsheet- and so their ability to get the benefits of leader/follower mileage like that just doesn't exist. He thought that maybe the very largest operators- Walmart and Amazon- could benefit from this, but he thought that no one else could.

This was why he went into industrial robotics instead, where it was clear that the finances could work out today.

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

#116

Post by dyauspitr »

kklisura wrote: post #54

When Tesla demoed (via video) self-driving in 2016 with a claim "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" and then when they unveiled Semi in 2017 - I tweeted out and honestly thought that trucking industry is changed forever and it doesn't make sense to be starting in trucking industry. It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it o…

Waymo has worked out. I’ve taken one so many times now I don’t even think about it. If Waymo can pull this off in NYC I believe it will absolutely be capable of long distance trucking not that far in the future.

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

#117

Post by charcircuit »

bonoboTP wrote: post #104
charcircuit wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At the end of the day if the radiologist makes an error the radiologist gets sued. Are you sure? Who would want to be a radiologist then when a single false negative could bankrupt you? I think it's more likely that as long as they make a best effort at trying to classify correctly then they would be fine.

Doctors have malpractice insurance and other kinds of insurance for that. They won't go bankrupt in reality.

By that logic you would get malpractice insurance for the AI to similarly offload the risk.

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

#118

Post by quadragenarian »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #46

AI _is_ replacing radiologists. Where AI stands for "An Indian". Search for teleradiology, on Google and on HN too.

You do realize that in order to interpret imaging for a US based patient, any physician needs to have a US medical license?

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

#119

Post by dyauspitr »

christianqchung wrote: post #114
basisword wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's limited to a few specific markets though. My bet is they aren't going to be able to roll it out widely easily. Probably need to do years of tests in each location to figure out the nuances of the places.

Yeah, I have no idea if Waymo will ever be a rural thing honestly, mostly for economic reasons. I'm skeptical it would get serious suburban usage this decade too. But for major cities where less than 80% of people own cars, test time doesn't seem to be making a difference. They've been expanding in Austin and Atlanta, seemingly with less prep time than Phoenix and San Fran.

I could see it taking off in the suburbs/rural areas if they start having a franchise model when it’s more mature.

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

#120

Post by red_rech »

christianqchung wrote: post #114
basisword wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's limited to a few specific markets though. My bet is they aren't going to be able to roll it out widely easily. Probably need to do years of tests in each location to figure out the nuances of the places.

Yeah, I have no idea if Waymo will ever be a rural thing honestly, mostly for economic reasons. I'm skeptical it would get serious suburban usage this decade too. But for major cities where less than 80% of people own cars, test time doesn't seem to be making a difference. They've been expanding in Austin and Atlanta, seemingly with less prep time than Phoenix and San Fran.

Atlanta seems to be a bit contradictory to some of your other thoughts.

The city itself is relatively small. A vast majority of area population lives distributed across the MSA, and it can create hellish traffic. I remember growing up thinking 1+ hour commutes were just a fact of life for everyone commuting from the suburbs.

Not sure what car ownership looks like, and I haven’t been in years, but I’d imagine it’s still much more than just 20%

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