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Reading this article makes one appreciate just how much expertise doctors have. As soon as the doctor was presented with a few symptoms, he was able to begin ru

Reading this article makes one appreciate just how much expertise doctors have. As soon as the doctor was presented with a few symptoms, he was able to begin running through a checklist of problems related to this specific issue and arrived relatively quickly at the solution. Many doctors are able to routinely do this for dozens of ailments under intense pressure, making them even more impressive.

jerome-jh 6y ago
And unfortunately some doctors cannot make a proper diagnostic even after visiting them several times, and having a rather uncommon, but not rare, condition. First hand experience. Well that's life.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- abrookewood 6y ago
  I'm not surprised by that. There is an exhausting amount of information that they have to digest & recall. It makes sense that they would assume that the most common conditions are likely to be the cause of your ailment. Maybe AI or automated diagnosis could help in the future, by suggesting rare conditions that fit the symptoms as well as the common ones.
nitrogen 6y ago
The pattern matching could easily be automated. It's basically a game of 21 questions. Doctors sometimes fail here by getting too fixated on prior probabilities ("this condition is very uncommon so you don't have it"). The expertise, and IME this is rare, is in turning vague descriptions into matchable patterns, prompting for more detail when needed, and explaining things at the appropriate level (which for some patients might be quite high, others quite low).
- fluffernutter 6y ago
  Maybe the patterns change and that is what makes humans good at it and automated things not.
- Retric 6y ago
  In theory sure, in practice nobody had built a general system that works well yet.
  - fdavison 6y ago
    "While in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is."
  - stevula 6y ago
    I think the point was that the difficulty for machines is not the differential diagnosis, but in coaxing out the right details of patient history to feed into that algorithm. I don’t know if differential diagnosis is automatable but machines definitely suck at the latter issue.
wolco 6y ago
It makes me appreciate how much expertise these doctors have. Generalizing it to all doctors is going one step too far.
exikyut 6y ago
How can I rapidly ascertain (within the first minutes of meeting for the first time) if I'm talking to such a doctor, vs someone who's going to complacently sit around and pontificate about what's possible without actually actioning anything?
- techdragon 6y ago
  I’ve not found a way yet, other than being around when they handle some kind of crisis, seen that a few times while working in a hospital. Wandering though on my way to/from lunch break was very occasionally surprising. It’s quite a surprise the first time you see a hospital bed roll past as a doctor on top is doing cpr compressions then literally hops off, while a second doctor hops, mid-run, to resume the compressions... like trick horse riding or something. Only ever saw it once but damn it was something.

jerome-jh 6y ago

And unfortunately some doctors cannot make a proper diagnostic even after visiting them several times, and having a rather uncommon, but not rare, condition. First hand experience. Well that's life.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
abrookewood 6y ago
I'm not surprised by that. There is an exhausting amount of information that they have to digest & recall. It makes sense that they would assume that the most common conditions are likely to be the cause of your ailment. Maybe AI or automated diagnosis could help in the future, by suggesting rare conditions that fit the symptoms as well as the common ones.

nitrogen 6y ago

The pattern matching could easily be automated. It's basically a game of 21 questions. Doctors sometimes fail here by getting too fixated on prior probabilities ("this condition is very uncommon so you don't have it"). The expertise, and IME this is rare, is in turning vague descriptions into matchable patterns, prompting for more detail when needed, and explaining things at the appropriate level (which for some patients might be quite high, others quite low).

fluffernutter 6y ago
Maybe the patterns change and that is what makes humans good at it and automated things not.
Retric 6y ago
In theory sure, in practice nobody had built a general system that works well yet.
- fdavison 6y ago
  "While in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is."
- stevula 6y ago
  I think the point was that the difficulty for machines is not the differential diagnosis, but in coaxing out the right details of patient history to feed into that algorithm. I don’t know if differential diagnosis is automatable but machines definitely suck at the latter issue.

wolco 6y ago

It makes me appreciate how much expertise these doctors have. Generalizing it to all doctors is going one step too far.

exikyut 6y ago

How can I rapidly ascertain (within the first minutes of meeting for the first time) if I'm talking to such a doctor, vs someone who's going to complacently sit around and pontificate about what's possible without actually actioning anything?

techdragon 6y ago
I’ve not found a way yet, other than being around when they handle some kind of crisis, seen that a few times while working in a hospital. Wandering though on my way to/from lunch break was very occasionally surprising. It’s quite a surprise the first time you see a hospital bed roll past as a doctor on top is doing cpr compressions then literally hops off, while a second doctor hops, mid-run, to resume the compressions... like trick horse riding or something. Only ever saw it once but damn it was something.