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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

#301
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how many people would want a second opinion (from a human) if they're presented with a bad discovery from a radiological exam and are then told it was fully automated. I have to admit if my life were on the line I might be that Karen.

Self-care is being Karen since when?

"Cancer? Me? I'd like to speak to your manager!"

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

#302
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption is that more productive AI + humans leads to cost reductions. But if everyone involved has a profit motive, you end up cutting at those cost reductions. "We'll save you 100 bucks, so give us 50", done at the AI model level, the AI model repackager, the software suite that the hospital is using, the system integrators that manage the software suite installation for the hospital, the reseller of the inte…

Nobody has a profit motive since doctors get their bills paid per procedure and health insurers have a profit cap.

Consider that the profit cap is a percentage, so increased costs in fact increase the amount of profits to be scooped up. So health insurers that would like to see more cash are incentivized to have costs increase!

I also think that the profit cap percentage is not something that applies across the board to every single player in the healthcare space.

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

#303

I'm an interventional radiologist with a master's in computer science. People outside radiology don't get why AI hasn't taken over. Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. Will radiologists be replaced? Almost certainly the answer is no. Why not? Medical risk. Unless the law changes, a radiologist will have to sign off on each imaging report. So say yo…

Doesn't most of the stuff a radiologist does get double checked anyways by the doctor that orders the scan in the first place? I guess not a more typical screening scan like a mammogram. However, for anything else like a CT, MRI, Xray, etc. I expect the doctor/NP that ordered it in the first place will want to take a look at the image itself and not just the report on the image.

As an ER doc I look at a lot of my own studies, because I'm often using my interpretation to guide real-time management (making decisions that can't wait for a radiologist). I've gotten much better over time, and I would speculate that I'm one of the better doctors in my small hospital at reading my own X-rays, CTs, and ultrasounds.

I am nowhere near as good as our worst radiologist (who is, frankly... not great). It's not even close.

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

#304

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…

I remember a claim that someone was trying to use an ML model to detect COVID by analyzing the sound of the patient coughing. I couldn't for the life of me understand how this was supposed to work. If the coughing of COVID patients (as opposed to patients with other respiratory illnesses) actually sounds meaningfully different in a statistically meaningful way (and why did they suppose that it would ? Phlegm is phleg…

That doesn't really follow. NN models have been able to pick up on noisier and more subtle patterns than humans for a long time, so this type of research is definitely worth a short in my opinion. The pattern might also not be noticeable to a human at all, e.g. "this linear combination of frequency values in the Fourier space exceeds a specific threshold".

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

#305
post #277

I'm an interventional radiologist with a master's in computer science. People outside radiology don't get why AI hasn't taken over. Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. Will radiologists be replaced? Almost certainly the answer is no. Why not? Medical risk. Unless the law changes, a radiologist will have to sign off on each imaging report. So say yo…

This is like saying that self-driving cars won't ever become a thing because someone behind the wheel needs to be to blame. The article cites AI systems that the FDA already has cleared to operate without a physicians' validation.

Tesla still hasn't accepted liability for crashes caused by FSD. They in fact fight any such claims in court very vigorously.

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

#306

I'm an interventional radiologist with a master's in computer science. People outside radiology don't get why AI hasn't taken over. Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. Will radiologists be replaced? Almost certainly the answer is no. Why not? Medical risk. Unless the law changes, a radiologist will have to sign off on each imaging report. So say yo…

Is there a risk that radiologists miss stuff because they get a pre-written report by AI that pushes them in a certain direction?

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id be more concerned about the false negative. My report says nothing found? Sounds great, do I bother getting a 2nd opinion?

You pay extra for a doctor's opinion. Probably not covered by insurance.

That's horrific. You pay insurance to have ChatGPT make the diagnosis. But you still need to pay out of pocket anyway. Because of that, I am 100% confident this will become reality. It is too good to pass up.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this indicates lack of incentives to reduce healthcare costs by optimisation. If AI can do something well enough , and AI + humans surpass humans leading to costs reductions/ increased throughput this should be reflected in the workflows. I feel that human processes have inertia and for lack of a better word, gatekeepers feel that new, novel approaches should be adopted slowly and which is why we are not seeing t…

Remember, the AI doesn’t create anything, so you add risk potentially to the patient outcome and perhaps make advancement more difficult. My late wife had to have a stent placed in a vein in her brain to relieve cranial pressure. We had to travel to to New York for an interventional radiologist and team to fish a 7 inch stent and balloon from her thigh up. At the time, we had to travel to NYC, and the doctor was one…

> Who’s going to train the future physician the skills needed to develop the procedure?

i would presume that AI taking over won't erase the physical work, which would mean existing training regimes will continue to exist.

Until one day, an AI robot is capable of performing such a procedure, which would then mean the human job becomes obsolete. Like a horse-drawn coach driver - that "job" is gone today, but nobody misses it.

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

#310
post #288
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying that self-driving cars won't ever become a thing because someone behind the wheel needs to be to blame. The article cites AI systems that the FDA already has cleared to operate without a physicians' validation.

> This is like saying that self-driving cars won't ever become a thing because someone behind the wheel needs to be to blame. Which is literally the case so far. No manufacturer has shown any willingness to take on the liability of self driving at any scale to date. Waymo has what? 700 cars on the road with the finances and lawyers of Google backing it. Let me know when the bean counters sign off on fleets in the mil…

You also have Mercedes taking responsibility for their traffic-jam-on-highways autopilot. But yeah. It's those two examples so far (not sure what exactly the state of Tesla is. But.. yeah, not going to spend the time to find out either)
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