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Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

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Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#21

Post by Brakenshire »

Gatsky wrote: post #19

I'd like to make two points. Firstly, before anyone builds an AI that can look after people, maybe they can fix the software for looking at Xrays WHICH ALWAYS STOPS WORKING IN THE MIDDLE OF A BUSY CLINIC. Secondly, I challenge someone here to put a number on how much it would cost to produce an AI that can operate robustly in a clinical environment. This includes the costs of developing such a thing, deploying it as…

I think in some ways we're thinking of automation in the wrong way. That doesn't have to mean having having an AI doctor, with, you know, a lovely bedside manner. Reducing the cost of blood tests so that you can do a sweeping diagnosis of 50 problems at once rather than just 10 is a sort of automation - the doctor no longer has to carefully navigate their way through "there's a chance that it is this, but the blood test is expensive, so we'll try something else first". It's automation to analyse blood tests in combination, and look for profiles for diagnosis. It's automation for a patient to have their own smartphone-connected blood pressure monitor, which will alert the surgery if the read-out is dangerous. It's certainly automation to use software image analysis to pick up the presence of cancer cells in tissue biopsies. It's a step-by-step process, it doesn't have to be all at once.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#22

Post by aeberbach »

I feel like a sucker for responding to such obvious self-serving link bait, but full of gratitude to the very human staff at the hospital where I had a minor procedure last week I will anyway. Here's the simplistic refutation that is all the simplistic premise deserves:

Until you pass a Turing AND a Voight-Kampff test, stay the fuck out of my health system.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#23

Post by Brakenshire »

yeukhon wrote: post #12
Brakenshire wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may well be right, but nevertheless, where medical care can be automated, it should be. Because otherwise medical care never gets more affordable. The economy doubles in size, wages double in the general economy, and ... doctors wages double. As long as we consider medicine an elite profession (so that we don't train an overabundance of doctors and drive the wages down, which most of us wouldn't want to do) emplo…

> Because otherwise medical care never gets more affordable. They can be affordable but the problem is largely because of the large number of law suits hospitals might have to face, and plus the cost of buying those technology. Then you go with drugs. Those are expensive. Regulations, license, those are costly too. And salary too, very high. One might argue that doctors deserve to be paid more if they can do the job…

You're right of course that inflated drug prices and lawsuits are significant costs, but, for instance, the NHS analyses all proposed pharmaceuticals for cost-effectiveness, and barters with the manufacturers at a national level, and medical litigation in the UK is almost nil. The system is more efficient, but there is a base-line which is impermeable. The only way to go below that is to train many more doctors, and start paying them something closer to an average wage, but, firstly, they'd just move abroad, and secondly, you would not be able to persuade the candidates to train for ten years if they didn't earn a decent professional wage. The only other option is to move some of the burden onto technology.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#25

Post by eru »

Brakenshire wrote: post #10
eru wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And medical care is and has always been too expensive to provide proper care for the entire population. Which countries are you talking about here? (I agree with your general sentiment, though.)

I know there are issues which are specific to the States, but I would say this applies almost everywhere. Almost everywhere doctors are paid 5-10 times the median wage, because they are chosen from the top few percent of students, and that difference in wages introduces an inherent asymmetry in how many hours of work are necessary to buy an hour of a doctor's time. The majority of the population, certainly as people…

Oh, sure, there's an infinite amount of (generalized) health care people might want to consume if the prices are low enough.

You can get there either by lowering the pay of health care people, or by making them more productive per humman-hour, eg via automation or just better business practices.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#26

Post by lostlogin »

I work on a supposedly state-of-the-art GE scanner. If I let it select parameters it wants there are real, measurable negative consequences. It is a buggy, bad piece of hardware. Sure, there are better machines out there, but codifying the processes the human operator has is not going to happen anytime soon I don't think - hell, GE don't know how to get a user selection of a bool parameter right (it has a text field for the user to type in 1 for on, 0 for off. No toggles, buttons etc). Still, the craptastic system spurred me to learn a bit of coding to make stuff happen that the scanner can't/won't do. Don't rush in to replacing the humans too soon.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#27

Post by Dewie »

EGreg wrote: post #16
zarify wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree about the accuracy of diagnoses when the data is good. Here's the 'but': I think my main reason for distrusting computer diagnosis is that computers are still pretty terrible at figuring out what we are telling them, and patients are also pretty terrible at describing what symptoms they're suffering from. It's all very well to aim a camera at some sort of visible symptom, but what happens when there's…

Of course we will still need a doctor to perform the tests. But they'll be relying much more on the apps to suggest to them what tests to perform next. The patients won't be telling the computer anything, esp the unconscious patients, and photos won't be analyzed by computers. Idiocracy was a cool movie :)

I think I read a short snippet about introducing a new IT system in a doctors office. The doctors were against having to do things in a new way due to the new system, even though it probably was more efficient. I think the reason or theory behind their reluctance was that it would automate some of their regular duties. I can imagine that many doctors will not feel kindly about working with a system whose purpose is to automate (some) of their work, and which gets smarter and more independent the more the doctor works with it.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#28

Post by BadassFractal »

At the very least we can get started by having doctors be thoroughly assisted by computers. Transition from humans to full automation is always difficult, so it's good to start with the computer being a very accessible and very powerful resource that helps inform the doctor's decisions through data.

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#29

Post by Suncho »

jastevenson wrote: post #17

Other posts by this author: "Programmers need to be replaced by computers...no more buggy code!" "Lawyers need to be replaced by computers--no more sleazy ambulance chaser ads!" "Money needs to grow on trees! No more financial problems!"

I know this is sarcasm, but law seems like a great candidate for automation. The law is literally a set of rules. And in the process of automating legal stuff, we might be forced to clean up some existing instances of ambiguity and vagueness. Wouldn't that be nice?

Regarding programmers, much of their job already is to replace themselves with computers. Once a task becomes routine, you should automate it.

Regarding money growing on trees, that's not going to happen in the literal sense. But perhaps the only way to provide for everyone is to institute a universal unconditional basic income. Without jobs, people won't be able to "earn" their livings anymore. But that's okay. They'll be free to spend their time doing things that only humans can do and that nobody may have ever thought to pay for.

How many geniuses out there are spending their time being doctors and lawyers? How many of them will generate the next innovations that propel the human race forward once they're no longer trapped spending so much time at work?

There's only one way to find out!

Re: Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots

#30

Post by krakensden »

Brakenshire wrote: post #21
Gatsky wrote: post #19

I'd like to make two points. Firstly, before anyone builds an AI that can look after people, maybe they can fix the software for looking at Xrays WHICH ALWAYS STOPS WORKING IN THE MIDDLE OF A BUSY CLINIC. Secondly, I challenge someone here to put a number on how much it would cost to produce an AI that can operate robustly in a clinical environment. This includes the costs of developing such a thing, deploying it as…

I think in some ways we're thinking of automation in the wrong way. That doesn't have to mean having having an AI doctor, with, you know, a lovely bedside manner. Reducing the cost of blood tests so that you can do a sweeping diagnosis of 50 problems at once rather than just 10 is a sort of automation - the doctor no longer has to carefully navigate their way through "there's a chance that it is this, but the blood t…

Want to work on any of the above? Bio-Rad is hiring in the Bay Area.
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