Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trick is whether the cases of disagreement were themselves predictable! Given a fixed number of oncologists and deploying Watson only to support those oncologists, yes, you're correct that its only useful if it outperforms them. But I think of it more like Watson is a single hive-mind team of like a thousand med students near the end of residency: they get most things right but there are a few places where more e…
I think part of the problem for Watson is that it needs someone to gather the data, which is usually a doctor. So if you're pairing each patient with an oncologist for intake anyway , it's not clear that "examination plus enter all data into Watson" is a benefit over "examination plus make a decision". I guess the ideal outcome for Watson (if it doesn't outpace expert oncologists) would be something like "experience…
https://canadiantaskforce.ca/tools-resources/breast-cancer-2...
Wider screening isn't great. Essentially, people with medical problems self-select pretty alright already, and wide early-screening initiatives for most cancers introduces as much or more false positives (that persist through screening!) than actual cases of cancer it catches - and moreover, it's not even clear that the early screening is effective - the false negative rate is high enough that the overall incidence of advanced cancer is unchanged even with early screening. (Bleyer and Welch, NEJM, 2012)
Basically, we need better screening, not more screening at our current levels, and it's not clear whether watson can provide that.