I personally have been very happy with my decision to go into medicine (specifically, interventional radiology). I have a few comments about this discussion:

I personally have been very happy with my decision to go into medicine (specifically, interventional radiology). I have a few comments about this discussion: 1. The average radiologist gets paid about $40 (after expenses) to read a CT scan. So you have to read a LOT of scans to make as much as roentgen. Many scans contain hundreds of images, and the diagnosis can depend on just a few pixels. Partly based on the radiologist's diagnosis, the patient may need to go to surgery (at least $25,000) or need another round of chemotherapy ($50,000), etc. When viewed in this context, I think $40 is a great value for getting an expert opinion. (As a side note, there is a lot of regional variation in salaries. They are probably lowest in New York City. Contrast that to law or finance, where the highest salaries are probably in New York City. I think the difference is due to the fact that medicine (even radiology) is practiced locally, and thus depends on local supply and demand, and does not have the kind of network effects that you see in law or finance.) 2. In terms of disruptive technologies in radiology, I don't think that computers will be able to replace radiologists any time soon, but there are lots of ways that computers could help radiologists be more productive or accurate. Much of the advances in consumer technology from the past decade are not yet available in radiology. Images are usually transferred to another hospital by mailing a CD. Reports are transferred using a fax machine. We're lucky if we can get 10 frames per second when scrolling through a large study. Computer systems are not linked -- ie, we have to type the patient's name into both the radiology system and the medical records system. For various reasons, many of these problems will have to be solved by big companies and not startups. But there are other opportunities for startups. If you're interested, check out my startup http://www.revisionrads.com http://www.revisionrads.com.