3 ms·
> The fact is there's no market for the product. That's empirically not true; the first such product approved for clinical use entered the market in the late 9
by ska 5y ago
> The fact is there's no market for the product.
That's empirically not true; the first such product approved for clinical use entered the market in the late 90s, and they've had small-to-medium success since. Definitely none of them changed things radically, but it's pretty common CAD functionality now and has both detractors and champions.
> Radiologists can fly through those exams with high quality,
This is also not entirely true, one of the biggest problems for screening (not diagnostic) programs is that the false negative rate for radiologists is high. They do fly through these scans, but that's to make it economically feasible. Also, the average radiologist performance on screening mammo is not very good - most have to do it regularly (probably 100s per month) to do it well.
You are right that augmentation is the more plausible path to clinical success, but that's been what most of the clinical systems aim to do anyways, provide a sanity check on the radiologist.
- ethbr0 5y agoI have no idea why everyone tries to solve the hardest problem (true positives, no false positives) with machine learning, instead of solving the much easier problem (true negatives, no false negatives) that often delivers similar value. E.g. If a system could tell me which 967 results out of 1000 are normal, and send the other 33 for human review. True positives require solving every problem in the solution space. True negatives only require solving the most frequent problems.
- ska 5y agoIf I remember correctly this was tried in Europe ages ago, liability concerns made it impractical in US.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoWhy do I feel the AMA was a bigger problem than liability? Plus--wouldn't the software company be liable? (I don't think the tech is ready for office use, but when it is--I still think it will be a battle.) Kinda like all medical devices. Whenever there's a problem, the equipment is looked at first? Personally, I don't think the AMA wants computers taking away their doctor's precious income, and will only acquiesce when the tech makes the doctor more money, or is so good politicians/insurance companies start demanding it.
- ethbr0 5y agoInsurance companies will be the ones to push it. And they'll push it when the government (through Medicare) mandates it / cost reductions. But IMHO medical law in general has a big device / software blind spot. It's become decent at figuring out liability for humans, while permitting normal operations. But all that machinery and case law doesn't really exist for black box software systems (no human in the loop). And if there's one thing that medical providers and insurance companies hate, it's unbounded liability.