18 ms·

You would have a computer counsel patients? You would have a computer ask people to describe the side effects they've been experiencing, and ask probing questio

You would have a computer counsel patients? You would have a computer ask people to describe the side effects they've been experiencing, and ask probing questions to evaluate how serious those side effects really are, and which of their two dozen drugs might be causing them, and which drugs might be usefully discontinued or substituted and which might not? You would have a computer decide whether or not the patient's phone call, complaining that their latest drug isn't as effective as usual, warrants a call to their primary-care physician? You would assign important decisions about your medical care to the sole discretion of a Java program written by a committee of outsourced developers that don't know or care any more about pharmacy than, say, you? It sounds like you don't have a lot of experience with serious illness. Congratulations, and may you remain healthy for as long as possible!

omouse 19y ago
Why is a pharmacist counseling patients? They go to doctors no?
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Sure, but in the USA you might have to wait a couple weeks or a month to see a doctor, at which point you might get about 10 minutes of their time. Unless you're Bill Gates, of course. Also, people have multiple doctors, who prescribe multiple things... often using handwritten notes. There's no standard for medical records exchange, and if there is half the doctors aren't using it, so the receptionists tend to hand you a questionnaire and ask you for the names of all your drugs. If you fill out that form wrong... well, let's just say that the pharmacist may be one of the few people with an up-to-date, accurate, computerized list of what you've been taking. For my elderly relatives, each of whom is taking a veritable salad of drugs, I just carry a sheaf of the pharmacy's printouts and copy them directly onto the questionnaires. And, in practice, people ask medical questions of whoever is in front of them at the time.
yummyfajitas 19y ago
>You would have a computer ask people to describe the side effects they've been experiencing, and ask probing questions to evaluate how serious those side effects really are, and which of their two dozen drugs might be causing them, and which drugs might be usefully discontinued or substituted and which might not? The only thing here I actually would want the pharmacist to do is ask the questions. The rest of it should be done by computer, and in fact some of it already is (checking for drug interactions). People sometimes forget stuff, whereas a database doesn't. People are sometimes mislead by experience/spurious correlations, while a properly designed computer system won't be. So I would, in fact, assign important decisions about my medical care to a java program written by a team of doctors, pharmacists and computer geeks.
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  The only thing here I actually would want the pharmacist to do is ask the questions. Well, sure. I'll go ahead and grant you that. But asking the right questions is a very important, very difficult art. The answers depend on which questions are asked, and how. People sometimes forget stuff, whereas a database doesn't. True, and lots of mistakes are made because of inadequately systematized drug dispensing systems. But I'm not saying that your pharmacist shouldn't be highly augmented by powerful computer technology. Just that there's going to be a human pharmacist in that loop for the foreseeable future. There are drugs that don't require pharmacists: we call them over-the-counter drugs. Maybe someday our computers will get so good that every drug will be OTC... but I'm not an optimist. At some point designing drug cocktails becomes an art: There's no optimum to seek, because there are a number of different goals that one could pursue and tradeoffs one could make. That takes an artist -- a consulting artist, like an architect or a decorator. And that, in turn, takes serious social skills that computers don't have.

omouse 19y ago

Why is a pharmacist counseling patients? They go to doctors no?

mechanical_fish 19y ago
Sure, but in the USA you might have to wait a couple weeks or a month to see a doctor, at which point you might get about 10 minutes of their time. Unless you're Bill Gates, of course. Also, people have multiple doctors, who prescribe multiple things... often using handwritten notes. There's no standard for medical records exchange, and if there is half the doctors aren't using it, so the receptionists tend to hand you a questionnaire and ask you for the names of all your drugs. If you fill out that form wrong... well, let's just say that the pharmacist may be one of the few people with an up-to-date, accurate, computerized list of what you've been taking. For my elderly relatives, each of whom is taking a veritable salad of drugs, I just carry a sheaf of the pharmacy's printouts and copy them directly onto the questionnaires. And, in practice, people ask medical questions of whoever is in front of them at the time.

yummyfajitas 19y ago

>You would have a computer ask people to describe the side effects they've been experiencing, and ask probing questions to evaluate how serious those side effects really are, and which of their two dozen drugs might be causing them, and which drugs might be usefully discontinued or substituted and which might not? The only thing here I actually would want the pharmacist to do is ask the questions. The rest of it should be done by computer, and in fact some of it already is (checking for drug interactions). People sometimes forget stuff, whereas a database doesn't. People are sometimes mislead by experience/spurious correlations, while a properly designed computer system won't be. So I would, in fact, assign important decisions about my medical care to a java program written by a team of doctors, pharmacists and computer geeks.

mechanical_fish 19y ago
The only thing here I actually would want the pharmacist to do is ask the questions. Well, sure. I'll go ahead and grant you that. But asking the right questions is a very important, very difficult art. The answers depend on which questions are asked, and how. People sometimes forget stuff, whereas a database doesn't. True, and lots of mistakes are made because of inadequately systematized drug dispensing systems. But I'm not saying that your pharmacist shouldn't be highly augmented by powerful computer technology. Just that there's going to be a human pharmacist in that loop for the foreseeable future. There are drugs that don't require pharmacists: we call them over-the-counter drugs. Maybe someday our computers will get so good that every drug will be OTC... but I'm not an optimist. At some point designing drug cocktails becomes an art: There's no optimum to seek, because there are a number of different goals that one could pursue and tradeoffs one could make. That takes an artist -- a consulting artist, like an architect or a decorator. And that, in turn, takes serious social skills that computers don't have.