Comment by UncleMeat
2 days ago
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.