Can a Computer Replace Your Doctor?

Instead the money if concentrated in fewer hands and there is an upper limit to what a human can consume (e.g. a single rich person can't eat more than hundred middle class people).

on top of what you describe, i find most doctors to be biased towards "i know better than you" behavior. i have found that being an intelligent person makes dealing with doctors especially difficult since you need to be strategic to convince them and at the same time appear to not know too much about your own health problems. i have had incompetent resident doctors argue with me just because i know more about my illness than they do, and their ego is such that they cannot admit to themselves or me that they are wrong.

any technology that leads to me spending less time interacting with doctors is a huge win.

I think in general it is misunderstood what doctors actually do... ie that they perform some kind of analysis to produce some kind of output. What they actually do, is take responsibility for the well being of a complete stranger. There are certainly a number of doctors that don't understand this, and have some other kind of agenda like making money, getting through another day etc... but ultimately, a doctor's 'special' role is to take responsibility. This is not really measured or paid for or even expected, but I would say that the success of a healthcare system relates to how much it helps or interferes with this process. People don't really get this, because there are very few jobs like this, and we are used to not having anyone take responsibility for anything. Government and business are masters of diluting responsibility in an ocean of bureaucracy. Accountability/transparency are not a substitute for responsibility either.

I don't know how a computer is going to take responsibility for my health, or my child's health. It seems a frankly ridiculous idea to me, like replacing the world's violinists with robots.

There is probably a role for a 'computer' to deal with nuisance (as in, currently a nuisance for the person who has to take time off work, go to a medical centre, wait for the doctor) medical problems like routine blood tests, rewriting a script, routine screening. These jobs are already being taken on by non-doctor health practitioners like physician assistants, nurse practitioners. This is a reimbursement issue really, and it can be done because:

1. There is strong evidence base for the activity (eg doing a pap smear for pre-cancerous cervical lesions, or vaccinating a baby).

2. It is easy to measure the success or failure of the outcome (eg the pap smear is done, or not done).

3. There is a very small risk of legal action. (so that the intervention can be indemnified in such a way that it is still economically viable).

Much of medicine is not like this however. There is not a clear evidence base. There are not easy to measure outcomes. The consequences when things go wrong can be significant for the patient and the doctor/treating team. Health systems are already ruined by an irrational focus on optimizing the wrong thing eg surgical waiting times, time to hospital discharge, profits, so lets not make the problem worse with technology that is apparently better at the outcome we've decided to apply to the cornucopia of human disease and dysfunction.

Disclaimer: I'm a doctor (in Australia). I'm sorry for the waiting times. The truth is, I don't have the skills to invent an adaptive appointment queuing algorithm. Isn't that an engineering problem?

edit: clarity