Comment by seanmcdirmid
3 days ago
Many people don’t get it, it’s really expensive, even in countries with non broken healthcare systems (not the us) costs increase rapidly and no one is sure how the systems will remain solvent with the same level of care given today. The way things are currently done are entrenched but not sustainable, that’s when disruptions are apt to appear.
When I look at the US, the symptom -> diagnosis hypothesis is not anywhere near the most expensive bit. If you have a medical issue and AI works effectively for this then it saves you maybe one trip to your GP. Your insurance probably still requires your GP to provide a referral to a specialist. If insurance companies allow for AI to be used in place of a referral then you save this trip. But you still need all of the stuff to confirm a diagnosis. And you still need all of the treatment.
If you don't have a medical issue and an AI system tells you this then you save yourself a trip to a specialist and the associated diagnostic tests. Again, this saves a bit of money but is nowhere near the bulk of medical expenses. And it has to be able to do this without any diagnostic testing, just based off of your reported symptoms.
Even if AI diagnosis works flawlessly we save a bit of money but absolutely do not revolutionize the cost of the industry.
Salaries for healthcare workers make up only a small portion of expenditures. You do not want to avoid a trip to your GP for an AI system.
It'll be great at first while in development. But when profits need to be generated, seeing a specialist will get harder. There will be less wiggle room. I predict we will see more GP utilization.
Right. But I'm saying that even in the best case scenario this disruption doesn't shift healthcare costs dramatically.
I mean, if we're talking Christensenian disruption, that happens in neglected markets rather than currently dysfunctional ones. There's no shortage of actors wronging money out of health care so there's not a disruptable space per se.
> wronging
Not sure if this is a typo (of wringing) or a pun, but it's apt either way.
Society pretends that human doctors are better than they really are, and AI is worse than it really is.
It's the self-driving cars debate all over again.
It's really just not there yet. I've been in medical school for >3 years now and have been using the latest models with good prompting. They have gotten much better, but I still see misses that my classmates would easily catch. This is not acceptable in healthcare. It's certainly not getting 100% on all my assignments, which are a step below the complexity of real-world clinical practice.
Before medical school, I was not so sure of the quality of your average doc. Now having spent a year in clinical practice across various settings, I am extremely reassured. I can say with certainty that a US trained doctor is miles ahead of AI right now. The system sucks really bad though and forces physicians to churn patients, giving the impression that physicians don't pay attention/don't care/etc.