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Robot dentist performs first human procedure

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Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#161
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myself a med-school-dropout, I've found myself several times telling doctors how I really feel: "You aren't paid enough for the sacrifices you made just to be able to help people that probably aren't going to listen to your advice, anyways ." Thank you for your sacrifices, including to the oncoming ML "clinicians."

Come on, doctors are some of the most highly compensated wage earners. Every working stiff at all income levels sacrifices disproportionately to their income, and if I were a high school teacher, I'd belly laugh at this doctor pity party.

> Come on, doctors are some of the most highly compensated wage earners.

You mean it's not us tech workers? :P

Seriously though, I've seen the pay scales in some countries, they're nice and all, but they come with many extra years of training (expensive plus limited income while you do that), plus shift work and overtime that is bad for everyone (staff and patients) and which shouldn't be necessary — and wouldn't be necessary, if most nations all hired about twice as many of them… but that would require us to also train twice as many and politicians who do that get the budget shortfall today while their successors (possibly in other countries) get the reward for the benefit of their being more trained doctors and nurses.

I'd pay them the same for less hours. Mandatory less hours — go home and sleep, let someone else tend to this patient while you rest.

Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#162

I think what's being overlooked here by some commenters is the speed of this machine. A normal cavity filling can take 20/30 minutes. Imagine if that could be cut down to 1 minute with a perfect filling at the end? Even if we are talking about the dentist messing up the pain killing application it'll all be over pretty damn fast.

Agreed. The freezing doesn't always work for me. If I say "hey, I can feel that" the second dose might work, and it might not. What happens next is that they slow down, and while this sounds like compassion, it also lengthens the time they're drilling into my head while I can feel it. Just building up a resistance to physical torture. Bring it on, movie CIA guy. I think a quick, very intense filling might be better t…

I may be weird about this, but for me when I've been drilled (or even cleaned) and experienced tooth pain the level is 100%. I can't feel more pain.

I'm certainly not advocating that dentists don't do their best to numb patients before drilling. What I'm saying is it's fairly likely that by the time they can stop the machine in the case of pain the procedure will be nearly complete and the pain over.

Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has 26.1 doctors per capita, while Germany has 42.5, which is a middle-of-the-road number for the developed West. Do you accept the criticism that the US simply artificially limits the supply of doctors, which leads to overwork for physicians, and worse health outcomes for patients? Do you think most doctors would take less hours for a somewhat lower salary if you it was possible?

How is a 26.1 per capita calculated? Various unrelated sources state that there are 1.1M physicians (MD and DO) in the US. The US has a population of 360M?

It's per capita * 10,000. 26.1 doctors per citizen would definitely be a surprising standard of care.

26.1 / 10000 * 336M Americans = 876960 active physicians, and the error is probably a measurement artifact (how do you define 'active physician') and the fact that both the population and number of doctors vary over time.

https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...

Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of fields like this, where they have mostly been reduced to refinements but ultimately are still very barbaric procedures. All we've done is upgrade the stick (in this case, a nice shiny pick), but the procedure hasn't changed much at all. Too much of dentistry is still stuck on instant fix solutions. Take hard metal, scrape teeth. Something wrong on inside, just drill into it scrape it out and fill i…

> ultimately are still very barbaric procedures. At some point, you bottom out on the reality that we are all just big bags of meat and bones. No amount of technology or AI will change the fact that we are material objects who sometimes have problems with that composition and structure of that material.

That hasn't stopped other fields. You can get skin patches that utilize micro-needles to inject serum into your pimple, reducing the need to wait for pimples to "naturally" disappear. This was previously thought to be wildly unaffordable. Didn't we just get a new breakthrough for hair regeneration earlier this year using similar techniques?

Fact of the matter is, dentristry has lagged so far behind other fields because there's a lack of care for it. Dental is often not even considered "healthcare", despite how important oral health is to general health. It's also the easiest to hide, who cares about actual rotting teeth just sharpen them down and replace them with plastic. Whereas things like skincare and hair get far more priority due to being visible. Of course there's also the severity, people don't care if their teeth disintigrate, but a broken leg is a broken leg and gets handled appropriately.

Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they do! Unions though aren't the reason for the lack of cheap care, after all each party involved in a private system is incentivized to gouge as much as possible due to a lack of collective safety nets.

> collective safety nets. as in losing jobs to ML algorithms ? What would the point of a union then :)

Is this the hypothetical future where every job is replaced by a ML algorithm? In such case, you better hope there is some form of collective safety net for you ;)

Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#168
post #19

Its cool tech, don't get me wrong. But maybe, before we remove any amount of comfort with another human being we look at wether all of the dental practices are actually backed by science (which there is some scruitiny over). But also going to the dentist already isn't exactly pleasant, the pokes, scrapes, drill noises, etc. Maybe we improve that first before sticking it in a robot? People already have a ton of anxiet…

> But also going to the dentist already isn't exactly pleasant, the pokes, scrapes, drill noises, etc. Maybe we improve that first before sticking it in a robot?

From the article:

> The machine's first specialty: preparing a tooth for a dental crown. Perceptive claims this is generally a two-hour procedure that dentists will normally split into two visits. The robo-dentist knocks it off in closer to 15 minutes.

So this robot is actually improving the dental experience for the patient, which will hopefully reduce anxiety as well as reducing costs.

Re: Robot dentist performs first human procedure

#170
post #167

But will it carry on a conversation with me that consists entirely of open mouthed vowel sounds? I'm not sure speech recognition has gotten quite that far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F7sWy4JQ18

There will most certainly be a dental assistant operating the machine in various ways, and "managing the conversation" with the patient.
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