2 ms·
> annual full body MRIs to people So, these are not medically indicated scans which means you're going to be causing huge amounts of over-diagnosis and thus ov
by DanBC 7y ago
> annual full body MRIs to people
So, these are not medically indicated scans which means you're going to be causing huge amounts of over-diagnosis and thus over-treatment, which cause harm.
Hypothetical Bob has his first scan, and it returns a few shadows on his lung. The doctors ask if he's ever had chicken pox and he doesn't think so but he's not sure. So, these shadows are probably just scaring from chicken pox. But maybe they're cancer. The only sure way to tell is for a biopsy. Every medical intervention carries risk, and because you've increased the numbers of interventions you've increased the numbers of people falling victim to that risk.
Bob got a scare; he got an unnecessary medical intervention; he was subjected to risk: what did Bob gain from this?
The only thing this extra data tells us is "chicken pox sometimes scars the lungs and they sometimes show up on MRI", which is something we already know.
You do have a good point about the difficulty in getting hold of data to train AI. Sadly, because of recent missteps in England that's going to continue to be difficult unless the company can show rigorous protections.
- jedberg 7y ago> So, these are not medically indicated scans which means you're going to be causing huge amounts of over-diagnosis and thus over-treatment, which cause harm. What if we did something like set up a system where Bob's doctor can put in other symptoms, and only if one shows up that would indicate a lung MRI would the doctor be told, "Oh hey, we already did that, here's the MRI, and there was some shadow on the lung"?