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Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

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Re: Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

#11

Post by piggyback »

amrosado wrote: post #9

I'm an MD-PhD student with the type of background you are interested in developing. Radiation oncology is going to be a dying field in the future, but that is the subject of a different conversation. I think you want to go into MD-PhD, but I would suggest against it if you are more interested in the technology than what is best for patients. A lot of technologists are having problems conceptualizing this because they…

Thanks for your input. Regarding insurance companies and healthcare administration, I don't think those are problems to be solved by MDs or even PhDs but rather issues to be solved by already existing tech automation companies in coordination with legal experts. You mentioned radiation oncology is a dying field. Could you elaborate on the future of the various specialties (maybe top/bottom 3) as far as you can tell?

Re: Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

#12

Post by salaaaami »

mulcher wrote: post #4

Yes get the MD/Ph.D With an EE degree you can build the next generation devices.

do NOT get an md degree. it is useless. in this era of corporate driven health care that is mass produced, physicians are glorified trades workers. Real impact in the tech of health care is done by engineers. Being a physician does not allow you to implement anything in the current medicolegal climate. And understanding the reality of health care delivery does not require an md degree. Witness all the lawyers pursuing suits for many of the tech advancements of yesteryear-artificial hips, slings, implants-not to mention medications.

Future development of health tech will get hamstrung by the same sort of thing except it will be driven by cyber failures and privacy violations. Physicians will remain the fall guy for any product failure. Better to get a phd in a product that has major health implications-for example, develop a sensor for blood sugar that is non invasive, develop an algorithm and an app that predicts MI and cardiac disease for an individual. etc.

We are currently importing our physicians because other countries produce them so cheaply (just like software engineers). And we pay them a fraction of what medical school tuition accumulates to.

Re: Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

#13

Post by piggyback »

xaa wrote: post #10
piggyback wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your reply. Would you be so kind to elaborate on what you do for a living as well as in what capacity you work with MDs? Frey and Osborne (2013) published a paper that indicates how likely certain professions are to computerization. You can find it here: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Futu... . However they didn't elaborate on the various medical specialties. Do you happen to ha…

I am a researcher at a nonprofit research institution that does both basic and clinical research. When I work with MDs (or MD/PhDs), it is usually to analyze clinical and/or genomic data that they have collected from patients. Sometimes I am roped into building web applications either for data analysis or patient questionnaires. Once in a while, I develop prototype algorithms to aid in diagnosis from e.g., histology…

That sound pretty good to me! Can you tell me about the salary range of those MD/PhDs doing research and about the cut such an institution gets? I'm asking I'm guessing the hours that your institution are sane (read: 9-5ish)? Thanks a bunch.

Re: Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

#14

Post by amrosado »

piggyback wrote: post #11
amrosado wrote: post #9

I'm an MD-PhD student with the type of background you are interested in developing. Radiation oncology is going to be a dying field in the future, but that is the subject of a different conversation. I think you want to go into MD-PhD, but I would suggest against it if you are more interested in the technology than what is best for patients. A lot of technologists are having problems conceptualizing this because they…

Thanks for your input. Regarding insurance companies and healthcare administration, I don't think those are problems to be solved by MDs or even PhDs but rather issues to be solved by already existing tech automation companies in coordination with legal experts. You mentioned radiation oncology is a dying field. Could you elaborate on the future of the various specialties (maybe top/bottom 3) as far as you can tell?

I think radiation oncology is going to be displaced by emerging disciplines in medicine. I would pay close attention to what is happening in the field of immunotherapy since there are a lot of recent success in difficult cancers, autoimmune diseases, and infections. Recently several specialists have supported immunotherapy's potential in cancer treatment (http://www.nature.com/nature/outlook/cancer-immunotherapy/). Unfortunately, training in radiation oncology will most likely be different than the training required to perform this type of medicine. Likewise, the potential for automation/technology/AI in this particular field is quite limited.

It's important to think about why medicine might be moving away from radiological therapies. They are poorly tolerated by patients and expensive (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/radiation-therapy-...). It's difficult to say what will happen in the next couple of years, but radiology in general is taking a hit since hospitals are trying to limit the use of expensive and unnecessary imaging often at the expense of radiology professionals (http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis...). Choosing a career path in medicine should be more about how you like interacting with patients.

Re: Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

#15

Post by xaa »

piggyback wrote: post #13
xaa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a researcher at a nonprofit research institution that does both basic and clinical research. When I work with MDs (or MD/PhDs), it is usually to analyze clinical and/or genomic data that they have collected from patients. Sometimes I am roped into building web applications either for data analysis or patient questionnaires. Once in a while, I develop prototype algorithms to aid in diagnosis from e.g., histology…

That sound pretty good to me! Can you tell me about the salary range of those MD/PhDs doing research and about the cut such an institution gets? I'm asking I'm guessing the hours that your institution are sane (read: 9-5ish)? Thanks a bunch.

I live in an inexpensive part of the country, so salaries obviously vary based on that. $80-150K is the normal range for a PI here, but the sky's the limit if you can pull in a lot of grants/royalties.

There are no set hours. You work when and where you want. (I usually roll in around 11-noon). They don't really care how you spend your time, as long as you publish and get grants. Patents are just icing. Obviously clinical hours are in the 9-5 timeframe though.

I don't really know the normal IP cut in detail. I believe it is roughly 50% of the patent royalties, negotiable depending on how much pull you have. But if you are the actual owner of the business as well as the patent creator, then you get both the royalty cut and the business profit, whereas if you just sell the patent you get only the royalties (but obviously that is a lot less work).

EDIT: I feel compelled to point out that it's not all roses. The flip side of the freedom is that you are judged solely on your results. If you can't produce, for whatever reason, you're going to have a hard time. There's little job security. And so forth.

Re: Should I study towards a MD/PhD in light of advances in AI/robotics/automation?

#16

Post by piggyback »

amrosado wrote: post #14
piggyback wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your input. Regarding insurance companies and healthcare administration, I don't think those are problems to be solved by MDs or even PhDs but rather issues to be solved by already existing tech automation companies in coordination with legal experts. You mentioned radiation oncology is a dying field. Could you elaborate on the future of the various specialties (maybe top/bottom 3) as far as you can tell?

I think radiation oncology is going to be displaced by emerging disciplines in medicine. I would pay close attention to what is happening in the field of immunotherapy since there are a lot of recent success in difficult cancers, autoimmune diseases, and infections. Recently several specialists have supported immunotherapy's potential in cancer treatment ( http://www.nature.com/nature/outlook/cancer-immunotherapy/ ).…

Can you expand on potential future medical disciplines and what specialties you think are going to be replaced?
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