Comment by kube-system
4 days ago
Well the AI can’t order any diagnostics, so that’s good advice. And yes, specialists can be hard to schedule on short notice but if you’re in a major metro area, it may be worth trying multiple hospital systems.
4 days ago
Well the AI can’t order any diagnostics, so that’s good advice. And yes, specialists can be hard to schedule on short notice but if you’re in a major metro area, it may be worth trying multiple hospital systems.
> Well the AI can’t order any diagnostics
Oh, it absolutely can. If it's bloodwork I can absolutely get that done through Function Health or similar platform without a doctor's order. If it's imaging I can fly to another country and get it done faster and cheaper (including flights and accommodation) than the insured price in the US.
I also give the AI access to all my medical records at 6 institutions in 2 countries over the past 15 years, and it draws upon that context. Doctors don't usually have time for that.
I meant “order” in the clinical sense: e.g. you have to involve a clinician to get more information.
An LLM might be great for summarizing that wealth of information for a doctor to consume, but it won’t compete with a doctor’s judgement or knowledge of their practice and institutional knowledge.
LLMs, even at their theoretical best, are limited to publicly recorded knowledge. If you want to know how extremely limiting this can be, look at the surgical outcome rates of surgeons by educational experience, vs outcome rates from surgeons based solely on experience. Surgeons with more experience have far better outcomes than those with any other attribute.
> it won’t compete with a doctor’s judgement or knowledge of their practice and institutional knowledge.
I vehemently disagree, based on the number of times doctors have misdiagnosed me, and AI or other internet searches have yielded a correct diagnosis and treatment.
It won't compete with the top 5% of doctors, but most of the time you are not going to get to see a top-5% doctor.
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