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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 probabiliti
by 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 agoMaybe the patterns change and that is what makes humans good at it and automated things not.
- Retric 6y agoIn 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 agoI 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.