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Yes and no - sometimes you need tailored complex care from a professional. Sometimes you need routine treatment, but it's going to take 3 months to get an appo

• forgetfreeman 3y ago
  A naïve readthrough would lead one to that conclusion perhaps but the elephant in the room here is capitalism. Pragmatically, any "good enough" solution will be used to replace skilled care to improve patient throughput and thus the bottom line.
  • skohan 3y ago
    The problem is that "skilled healthcare" is essentially a cartel which uses artificial scarcity to increase the price. You can see the counter-example in Cuba, which has an incredibly high number of MD's per capita compared to other countries, and achieves very good healthcare results, especially in the context of other metrics of development and economy. There are so pitifully few health care practitioners compared to what we need in most developed countries I don't think too many jobs are going to be at risk any time soon if AI picks up some of the slack.
    • losteric 3y ago
      What about nursing? That seems to be the flip side where there isn't the protection of the cartel around doctors, so wages get driven to the floor and we see scarcity due to cost of living and mismanagement.
      • skohan 3y ago
        Nurses might not get paid what they are worth in all cases, but they have amazing job security. Ironically it's probably easier to replace a lot of what doctors do with AI than what nurses do.
    • forgetfreeman 3y ago
      We've already got NPs and PAs "picking up the slack" in the US. Prices are still outrageous for folks without health insurance and healthcare outcomes continue to decline. Adding another half-assed tool to the chain isn't how this gets fixed.
      • skohan 3y ago
        The US is not the only country with healthcare needs. There are plenty of developed nations with public health care systems which primarily suffer from scarcity rather than cost to patient, and AI could help with that.
        • forgetfreeman 3y ago
          What part of healthcare provided rote by untrained individuals at the behest of a LLM sounds like a solution to anything?
          • skohan 3y ago
            So for example, a treatment plan might look like this: 1. Go to a GP and explain symptoms 2. GP orders some tests based on symptoms 3. GP refers you to a specialist based on test results 4. Specialist orders more tests 5. Specialist analyzes results and orders more tests, or prescribes treatment plan 6. Check in with specialist in weeks or months to evaluate results and update treatment It seems to me that for many common issues, 1-4 could plausibly be replaced by AI guided care with minor downsides. If you are normally spending a lot of time waiting between steps for a practitioner to become available, then it's going to be a net win for many people.
            • forgetfreeman 3y ago
              "with minor downsides" ...
    • forgetfreeman 3y ago
      Artificial scarcity? Maybe. There aren't but so many households with children that fit inside the venn diagram of can afford med school, has the intellectual capacity and bloody-mindedness to actually finish med school, and is interested in going to med school.
      • skohan 3y ago
        Yes and no. No doubt the medical profession requires talent and rigor, but I think to some extent the hurdles which are placed in front of students who want to become doctors are artificially high to help justify the small number of graduates medical schools put out, which protects the artificially high salaries. For instance, if you read up on the frankly cruel residency process which doctors are forced to clear in the US, the insane hours are in large part because one of the doctors who was influential in shaping the current practice was an abuser of stimulants. So I think it's a bit of a "just so" story to assume that the version of the medical profession we have is the best possible version. And indeed Cuba is a good counter-example to your argument. Unless Cubans are just a lot more clever and resilient on average than Americans for example.
        • forgetfreeman 3y ago
          Yeah I'm not convinced. I've worked adjacent to the healthcare and pharma industries most of my adult life and I can tell you the complexity of the human body beggars belief. You aren't going to run the equivalent of a coding bootcamp for healthcare and get good results.
          • skohan 3y ago
            Not all of medicine is dealing with the full complexity of the human body. A lot of it is applying wrote knowledge to essentially follow a flow-chart to map a set of symptoms and details about the patient to a diagnostic / treatment plan. Doctors are trained to not deviate from medical orthodoxy, and for instance it's been studied that if doctors are told another doctor has already come to a given conclusion about a diagnosis, there is a strong effect that they will confirm the diagnosis even in the face of contravening evidence. I.e. I don't need "Dr House" to tell me to take 2 and call him in the morning. There is a whole large swath of routine medicine which AI could probably do. And I am happy if you and your family have been lucky to be blessed with good health and good care, but many people have experienced having a mysterious medical condition, and going to several doctors or waiting months before it can be properly diagnosed. Human medicine is far from perfect.
    • cuteboy19 3y ago
      Cuba is hardly the example if their indentured servant doctors defect to Brazil. Things must really really bad for someone to defect to Brazil
      • skohan 3y ago
        Exactly - it just shows how terrible the rest of the world is doing if Cuba of all places puts their medical system to shame, simply by training more doctors