5 ms·

Dermatology, eye conditions, blood cells, tissue, viruses, urine, saliva, everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the do

Dermatology, eye conditions, blood cells, tissue, viruses, urine, saliva, everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor. I foresee in less than ten years we will have a doctor in our pockets. No, it won't cure us and it won't replace a doctor, but it will give us all the information we need to have a 99% certainty of our condition. -- Second batch for animals and their conditions. Third batch, agriculture. Take a pic of a plant and tell me all the info, fertilizers, cultivation, etc, bonus for pest id and treatment. Pocket computers should be able to diagnose every living creature.

surgeryres 10y ago
One potential problem with this - the question of liability, and who is responsible for diagnostic accuracy? In this case, for some "Lab on a Chip" device providing a patient directly with diagnostic information without the vetting of a human doctor, liability would sit with the company. IBM's Watson at MD Anderson Cancer center did not work out real well for them. In other words, using AI in the realm of medical diagnostics is very difficult.
- thedailymail 10y ago
  I agree that the current excitement over medical AI seems wildly optimistic, but the problems with Watson at MD Anderson were more due to gross mismanagement on the MD Anderson side. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/ibms-watson-proves-useful-at-fighting-cancer-except-in-texas/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/ibms-watson-proves-u...
- BigJono 10y ago
  This seems like an easy question to answer. The liability lies with the user until they seek the professional advice of a doctor. Say a user decides to self-diagnose and damages themselves (either through inaction or self-medication or whatever). What difference does it make whether they diagnosed themselves by browsing symptoms on wikipedia or using an advanced diagnosis AI on their phone?
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    It's plausible that providing an advanced diagnosis AI on the phone (unlike purely passive information e.g. wikipedia) falls under existing laws that regulate medical services, and would make the provider liable for violating these regulations even if noone has damaged themselves yet.
- mitchellst 10y ago
  What about the treatment side? Once you have a diagnosis, could we use AI to review the patient's medical record, compare outcomes of past patients with the same diagnosis and similar histories, and suggest adjustments of personalized treatments to optimize outcomes? Overall, of course, you're right. Liability is the problem with my suggestion. Doctors prescribe to treat, they also prescribe to meet the legally mandated standard of care and minimize second-guessing later. Looking at each patient as a unique snowflake-- or at least, part of a thinner-sliced group-- helps with the first, but directly undercuts the second goal. Such an approach would probably need to originate outside the U.S.
  - surgeryres 9y ago
    Fair points. Extracting data from the EMR is very difficult because all EMR was originally intended to only be a storage place for data - not designed to output data back to a user.
- ska 10y ago
  Watson at MDACC isn't a good example, it's not the technology that the (main) problem.
fratlas 10y ago
While I think it'll happen eventually, medicine is not at all black and white. Anecdotal, but I had a suspicious mole looked at, the doctor couldn't decide, got a second opinion from their colleague, he still was only 90% sure. And that's a relatively simple example. Doctors are some of the smartest/hard working people in society, and if they can still make mistakes, medical-grade AI is a long way off.
- brut 10y ago
  I think you will see much less "disagreement" between AIs than between doctors. I.e., subjectivity of diagnosis can be much more easily accounted for in an algorithm than in a person...
  - adrianN 10y ago
    If you train all of them on the same data, you will get similar answers. That doesn't mean that those answers will be more right than a less sure doctor.
    - brut 9y ago
      Indeed. However this post is a "request for data" and I assume the algorithms of the future will be trained adequately :)
      - adrianN 9y ago
        I suppose all algorithms will be trained on all available data, making the results pretty similar.
- staticmalloc 10y ago
  "Medical-grade AI" has been possible for some diagnosing tasks since 1968. A simple linear model that takes in some features from an X-ray was able to outperform the best doctor in one study: https://goo.gl/yMP7sU https://goo.gl/yMP7sU
- iheartmemcache 10y ago
rbobby 10y ago
> to have a 99% certainty of our condition That seems way high. Correct diagnosis by doctors isn't 99%, or even close.
- wapz 10y ago
  Yup. I think it can give you a 99% certainty what condition you don't have, but not what you have. Especially not without physical recognition.
amelius 10y ago
> Second batch for animals and their conditions. We can learn a lot from animals, and clearly the data should not be protected as much as for humans. Therefore, I'm wondering, where is all the animal data? Could we already start to build models using that data? This could be useful for researching conditions that are more difficult to get data for in the case of humans.
pragone 10y ago
> everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor. Why do you want to have the diagnosis before seeing a physician? (I'm legitimately interested in the answer.) In my experience, it's about 50-50 with helping versus hurting making the correct diagnosis and providing accurate treatment.
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  Seeing a doctor can be expensive and inconvenient (another form of expensive).
  - tyfon 10y ago
    I can understand inconvenient, but expensive? Even in the US where you actually have to pay for medical stuff, it can't be more than $10 or so for a quick consultation?
    - Anderkent 10y ago
      Depends on whether you count opportunity costs under 'inconvenient' or 'expensive', I guess. If you have to take time off work to travel to a doctor, wait for an appointment, etc, that's all costs.
    - jmmcd 10y ago
      Dunno about the US, but in Ireland it is EUR60 for a 10-minute GP visit.
    - xapata 10y ago
      Not everyone has that kind of insurance. You also have no idea of the cost of various diagnostic actions they might take. I once had blood drawn and got charged $600 for it because the lab they chose was out of network. I didn't even know there was a cost, let alone which labs to request.
    - huehehue 10y ago
      $150 to have a nurse put a popsicle stick on my tongue and tell me that my throat infection would probably go away on its own.

surgeryres 10y ago

One potential problem with this - the question of liability, and who is responsible for diagnostic accuracy? In this case, for some "Lab on a Chip" device providing a patient directly with diagnostic information without the vetting of a human doctor, liability would sit with the company. IBM's Watson at MD Anderson Cancer center did not work out real well for them. In other words, using AI in the realm of medical diagnostics is very difficult.

thedailymail 10y ago
I agree that the current excitement over medical AI seems wildly optimistic, but the problems with Watson at MD Anderson were more due to gross mismanagement on the MD Anderson side. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/ibms-watson-proves-useful-at-fighting-cancer-except-in-texas/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/ibms-watson-proves-u...
BigJono 10y ago
This seems like an easy question to answer. The liability lies with the user until they seek the professional advice of a doctor. Say a user decides to self-diagnose and damages themselves (either through inaction or self-medication or whatever). What difference does it make whether they diagnosed themselves by browsing symptoms on wikipedia or using an advanced diagnosis AI on their phone?
- PeterisP 10y ago
  It's plausible that providing an advanced diagnosis AI on the phone (unlike purely passive information e.g. wikipedia) falls under existing laws that regulate medical services, and would make the provider liable for violating these regulations even if noone has damaged themselves yet.
mitchellst 10y ago
What about the treatment side? Once you have a diagnosis, could we use AI to review the patient's medical record, compare outcomes of past patients with the same diagnosis and similar histories, and suggest adjustments of personalized treatments to optimize outcomes? Overall, of course, you're right. Liability is the problem with my suggestion. Doctors prescribe to treat, they also prescribe to meet the legally mandated standard of care and minimize second-guessing later. Looking at each patient as a unique snowflake-- or at least, part of a thinner-sliced group-- helps with the first, but directly undercuts the second goal. Such an approach would probably need to originate outside the U.S.
- surgeryres 9y ago
  Fair points. Extracting data from the EMR is very difficult because all EMR was originally intended to only be a storage place for data - not designed to output data back to a user.
ska 10y ago
Watson at MDACC isn't a good example, it's not the technology that the (main) problem.

fratlas 10y ago

While I think it'll happen eventually, medicine is not at all black and white. Anecdotal, but I had a suspicious mole looked at, the doctor couldn't decide, got a second opinion from their colleague, he still was only 90% sure. And that's a relatively simple example. Doctors are some of the smartest/hard working people in society, and if they can still make mistakes, medical-grade AI is a long way off.

brut 10y ago
I think you will see much less "disagreement" between AIs than between doctors. I.e., subjectivity of diagnosis can be much more easily accounted for in an algorithm than in a person...
- adrianN 10y ago
  If you train all of them on the same data, you will get similar answers. That doesn't mean that those answers will be more right than a less sure doctor.
  - brut 9y ago
    Indeed. However this post is a "request for data" and I assume the algorithms of the future will be trained adequately :)
    - adrianN 9y ago
      I suppose all algorithms will be trained on all available data, making the results pretty similar.
staticmalloc 10y ago
"Medical-grade AI" has been possible for some diagnosing tasks since 1968. A simple linear model that takes in some features from an X-ray was able to outperform the best doctor in one study: https://goo.gl/yMP7sU https://goo.gl/yMP7sU
iheartmemcache 10y ago

rbobby 10y ago

> to have a 99% certainty of our condition That seems way high. Correct diagnosis by doctors isn't 99%, or even close.

wapz 10y ago
Yup. I think it can give you a 99% certainty what condition you don't have, but not what you have. Especially not without physical recognition.

amelius 10y ago

> Second batch for animals and their conditions. We can learn a lot from animals, and clearly the data should not be protected as much as for humans. Therefore, I'm wondering, where is all the animal data? Could we already start to build models using that data? This could be useful for researching conditions that are more difficult to get data for in the case of humans.

pragone 10y ago

> everything that can allow an app to give you a first diagnose before heading to the doctor. Why do you want to have the diagnosis before seeing a physician? (I'm legitimately interested in the answer.) In my experience, it's about 50-50 with helping versus hurting making the correct diagnosis and providing accurate treatment.

robbiemitchell 10y ago
Seeing a doctor can be expensive and inconvenient (another form of expensive).
- tyfon 10y ago
  I can understand inconvenient, but expensive? Even in the US where you actually have to pay for medical stuff, it can't be more than $10 or so for a quick consultation?
  - Anderkent 10y ago
    Depends on whether you count opportunity costs under 'inconvenient' or 'expensive', I guess. If you have to take time off work to travel to a doctor, wait for an appointment, etc, that's all costs.
  - jmmcd 10y ago
    Dunno about the US, but in Ireland it is EUR60 for a 10-minute GP visit.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Not everyone has that kind of insurance. You also have no idea of the cost of various diagnostic actions they might take. I once had blood drawn and got charged $600 for it because the lab they chose was out of network. I didn't even know there was a cost, let alone which labs to request.
  - huehehue 10y ago
    $150 to have a nurse put a popsicle stick on my tongue and tell me that my throat infection would probably go away on its own.