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I'm not in this field directly, but I have spent a lot of time interacting with scientists and medical professionals regarding new approaches to the field. I'm

by bbctol 10y ago

I'm not in this field directly, but I have spent a lot of time interacting with scientists and medical professionals regarding new approaches to the field. I'm a little surprised I didn't see more about resistance to unfamiliar technology from the medical field. The essay touched on this briefly, but I find there to be quite a lot of pushback in medicine against new methods in general. In some cases, this is a simple problem of embedded traditions, or worse, resistance to something that could put you out of a job. In a lot of ways, though, the resistance to change in medicine is seen as an important safeguard; when you're dealing with people's lives, you hesitate before making any changes in procedure, because we know our current methods work okay. Even if there are others which seem to work much better, we should proceed cautiously. How worried are medical professionals about adopting the more opaque techniques of AI? Can you persuade people to accept a diagnosis from something that can't explain its reasoning? Are you worried about any "bugs" or undiscovered unusual behavior in edge cases?

brandonb 10y ago
What's strange is that although doctors have been reluctant to adopt AI like MYCIN, the pace of adoption for other innovations like new surgeries, drugs, and implantable devices is actually quite rapid. So I don't think doctors reject new methods in general. I think the hidden factor here is the business model. A new surgery makes money for a hospital, which provides a countervailing force to the caution you mention. A new diagnosis algorithm may lose the hospital money, so what is the force that is going to push for its adoption?
- mgreg 10y ago
  The fee for service model prevalent in healthcare today is certainly one reason. However there is a general mistrust of algorithms. Here's a paper that documents what hey call Algorithm Aversion: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2466040 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2466040 Note that there are exceptions and this can be overcome.

by bbctol 10y ago

brandonb 10y ago

What's strange is that although doctors have been reluctant to adopt AI like MYCIN, the pace of adoption for other innovations like new surgeries, drugs, and implantable devices is actually quite rapid. So I don't think doctors reject new methods in general. I think the hidden factor here is the business model. A new surgery makes money for a hospital, which provides a countervailing force to the caution you mention. A new diagnosis algorithm may lose the hospital money, so what is the force that is going to push for its adoption?

mgreg 10y ago
The fee for service model prevalent in healthcare today is certainly one reason. However there is a general mistrust of algorithms. Here's a paper that documents what hey call Algorithm Aversion: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2466040 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2466040 Note that there are exceptions and this can be overcome.