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Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis

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Re: Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis

#4
post #2

I find it fascinating that AgileDiagnosis went through YC, and then six months later through RockHealth. Would any of the founders mind commenting on how/why they chose this path?

Both incubators have been crucial in their own ways. YC has an immense experience and expertise in start-ups of every kind to draw from that helps us tackle general start-up challenges decisively. Rock Health has a deep network of health and medical partners and mentors for opportunities and challenges unique to health-tech start-ups.

Re: Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis

#5
Every time I go to the doctor with anything that isn't obvious I'm always amazed that some basic ML tools aren't part of the standard practice. Especially since the standard reaction now is "here take a bunch of expensive tests, you won't be paying for most of them out of pocket so who cares!" We've had the tools for decades now to at least say "given these symptoms, it's very likely you X, Y or possibly Z". Additionally I'd be surprised if there weren't some unexpected correlations between various features that most doctors would miss.

Of course I guess I shouldn't be too surprised since medical records keeping is still 30 years out of date. The fact that it's still common practice to share medical records by filling out a consent form and having one office fax paper forms to other is ridiculous.

I really hope we start to see disruption in this industry, so much potential for not only cost savings but improved care.

Re: Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis

#8

Every time I go to the doctor with anything that isn't obvious I'm always amazed that some basic ML tools aren't part of the standard practice. Especially since the standard reaction now is "here take a bunch of expensive tests, you won't be paying for most of them out of pocket so who cares!" We've had the tools for decades now to at least say "given these symptoms, it's very likely you X, Y or possibly Z". Addition…

re: medical record sharing

I don't think it is that ridiculous really. Assuming that the policy to require a signature from the patient stands, fax seems like a pretty natural choice for sending a paper form. Alternatively, they could take the time to scan the form then email it.

Ideally, both you and I would probably prefer something completely digital (both forms and health records). Towards that goal, I think the biggest problem would be interoperability. Someone like Kaiser could (and maybe they do) use all digital things between themselves, because they can enforce a uniform software platform.

One nice thing that I've seen about some digital medical record systems is that they print out nice reports. That is a good fallback system, so that you can still fax or email simple documents around.

Re: Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis

#9

This industry is not very open to change. But, Borna and Eric are very hard working (and equally smart) guys -- just the kind of guys who can bring disruption to the industry. I have very high hopes!

I think it's great that there's an increase in attention to the medical space from smart young folks. From my experience though, being smart and hard working have very little to do with success in the medical-tech space. It mostly has to do with 1) if you can show ROI with the least (can't emphasize this enough) change to anyone's daily workflow, and 2) having a very very hard working sales team

Re: Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis

#10

Every time I go to the doctor with anything that isn't obvious I'm always amazed that some basic ML tools aren't part of the standard practice. Especially since the standard reaction now is "here take a bunch of expensive tests, you won't be paying for most of them out of pocket so who cares!" We've had the tools for decades now to at least say "given these symptoms, it's very likely you X, Y or possibly Z". Addition…

IMO, the problem is not so much about the tools, it is more about Doctors "perception" of such tools and to a certain extent the "culture" and their past medical training. There is tons of evidence/literature in form of clinical guidelines[1], RCTs (randomized controlled trial)[2], and information resources (such as UpToDate). There are several studies [3] on why doctors continue to ignore software alerts (that incorporate such knowledge) in EHRs at the point of care. Although, I do agree that across the board the UI/UX of the EHRs currently in the market is horrible.

I believe there is a fine line between a good "decision aid" and "annoyance" and getting this right for an expert working in a chaotic, collaborative, time-sensitive, law-suit-attracting environment is extremely challenging.

1. http://guidelines.gov/

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial

3. http://www.informatics-review.com/wiki/index.php/Alert_fatig...

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