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I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

antoine.fi

331–340 of 748 posts

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#331
post #58

I feel like I'm going nuts. There are other commenters saying this is a good practice they've also done for other injuries. You are saying you are an actual radiologist and immediately clock the problems with its advice. I have seen this pattern over and over again. Anytime someone is an actual expert at anything, AI output appears insufficient or incomplete or outright misleading. It is only when you do not know wha…

I see your argument, but it's not exactly news that an expert found a flaw in a popular tool. You could say the same about Wikipedia--experts have tons of issues with it, but Wikipedia still provides value to non-experts. The most likely alternative to Wikipedia for non-experts is simply not trying to learn anything new. Similarly with LLMs, you can't just write them off entirely because they sometimes provide mislea…

You 100% can write them off entirely and go about your business as you previously had done. Ignoring the errors, it is very debatable whether there are even productivity gains beyond: human programmer or whatever is excited and cranked up to unsustainable degrees of activity and thinking to 'keep up' with what he thinks is an AI doing the work.

I'm seeing this fairly often and when it isn't garbage it's a capable person who has gotten inspired by their 'collaboration' in which the busywork is being done by a machine, but they're doing so much directing and correcting that it's not unlike what would happen if they got heavy into meth and went on a tear.

You absolutely can write them off entirely and decide for yourself what your comfort level of human-killing speed-freakism you want to pursue in your productivity. There's a long history of humans managing astonishing levels of productivity through self-destructive means. This is not even cheaper, once the 'first one's free' wears off: it's just a novel method of getting humans to burn themselves harder in the belief that they have a magic feather.

The ones who're really throwing themselves into the situation are the ones who'll burn out, but who aren't setting themselves up for atrophy and learned helplessness. Anyone who believes the technology lets them be a lazy manager just getting paid, is in for an unpleasant discovery.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#333

> There's something incredibly peaceful about being in the hands of an expert you trust. [...] AI can absolutely shatter that feeling in an uncomfortable way [...] but I don't know if I can fully trust AI either. This really is key. We know we can't trust the AI, but at the same time we're also more comfortable asking the AI for clarifications or confronting it. Not having a time-bound appointment or paying by the ho…

To provide a competing point of anecdata: A Gemini diagnosis saved me $3,000 in unnecessary repairs on my Civic.

Saved me $2000 on a koi pond pump and filtration system

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#334
post #6

I'm a radiologist but can't really weigh in without seeing the full 3D MRI dataset. Regarding this point: > They performed shockwave therapy on my shoulder even though a recent clinical practice guideline says clinicians should not use or recommend shockwave therapy for rotator-cuff tendinopathy without calcification; I was told during ultrasound that there was no calcification. Ultrasound isn't a great way to assess…

Does radiology really make +$700,000.00 a year ? Someone on reddit claiming to be a radiologist claimed that. I wonder where the savings will go when those jobs are gone.

Physicians salaries account for about 8% of healthcare costs in the US.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#335

It funny to see the community here expects the human body to be treated like a deterministic function: for input X expect output Y - and that transfers to diagnosis - people expect to receive the same diagnosis from different specialists for the same issue. Given human body complexity, the diagnosis is a compound output of the experience, knowledge gained throughout the career and diagnosis methods/equipment, the tit…

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that medicine is inherently fallible and therefore AI is more likely to make a good diagnosis - particularly a cluster of specialist AIs?

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#336
post #31

I would not trust AI on images. But I once had ChatGPT tell me that an MRI report was very likely to be incorrect based on the text, and offered a different diagnosis. Since it was semi insisting, I visited another doctor who made me do a retest. Long story short, ChatGPT was correct. Again, this is just one single person's experience. So not worth much.

Anecdote but I gave Gemini Pro an image of an individual with Herpes Zoster which the doctor said was something else. Gemini gave the correct diagnosis which allowed for correct treatment and cure.

I don't understand why doctors don't prompt LLMs before saying wrong things. Is it ego?

I can understand for radiology because you need a specialized convolutional network, but for more knowledge based things...

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#337

> There's something incredibly peaceful about being in the hands of an expert you trust. [...] AI can absolutely shatter that feeling in an uncomfortable way [...] but I don't know if I can fully trust AI either. This really is key. We know we can't trust the AI, but at the same time we're also more comfortable asking the AI for clarifications or confronting it. Not having a time-bound appointment or paying by the ho…

There's a big difference between a _puzzle_ and a _mystery_. In a puzzle, the goal state is known, and as more pieces - data - appears, the goal gets closer. You know how far you are from the goal. A mystery is worse. With each additional piece of data, the goal gets farther away. Everything is more and more confusing. (Popularized by Malcom Gladwell)

Maybe I am missing something but I just find this wrong.

Everything is a puzzle: there is one "Truth" or one diagnosis. You (a smart human) should be able to converge on it by cross-examining your LLMs. By themselves, they have no interest in revealing this, no stakes, which makes them tools only useful at the hands of a capable investigator.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs do not learn. You put it out to pasture and create a new one. "Memory" in a session is essentially a context window party trick.

They learn during training, which is what we're talking about.

>which is what we're talking about.

You are anyway, I don't see anyone up the chain saying that.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#339

I feel like I'm going nuts. There are other commenters saying this is a good practice they've also done for other injuries. You are saying you are an actual radiologist and immediately clock the problems with its advice. I have seen this pattern over and over again. Anytime someone is an actual expert at anything, AI output appears insufficient or incomplete or outright misleading. It is only when you do not know wha…

Last week I went to a highly-specialized tertiary clinic about further treatment for a rare medical condition that I was diagnosed and treated for as a child. The two very specialized doctors I met there confirmed a diagnostic mistake that a specialist had made ten years ago. The only reason I pursued a second opinion, ten years later, was because Google Gemini had explained to me that the specialist ten years ago ha…

Can you elaborate on how you use Gemini to diagnose long term health issues? Considering doing the same for myself, but I have no idea what is too much vs too little information, and generally the type of prompt engineering to do.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#340

That might be doctors new nightmare: people who second guess everything with AI. Previously it was "google your symptoms".

Nightmare because they're always right and the A.I second guessing is always wrong, or because they just don't like to be second guessed?

Well it was a nightmare for my mother's do-nothing GP surgery in the UK. She had several conditions which were being handled completely separately without central coordination, and her health was in serious decline. We went in with a list of 20 AI-generated questions based on her conditions and treatment (which I was able to screen as I have a bio postgrad, but not medical training), including those related to NICE guidelines and procedure, and, frankly the GP bricked it and ordered a load of new interventions. My mother started to get proper treatment.

I wouldn't trust AI to make a diagnosis, but I would absolutely trust it to notice where procedure hasn't been correctly followed, where a treatment is counter-indicated because someone has missed a line on a health record, or where there's a clear potential alternate diagnosis which has been missed for spurious reasons. Also, unfortunately, where doctors aren't doing a decent job - often because they're overworked or underfunded.

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