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>AI can process more data than doctors have time to review, contains more knowledge than one person can study, and its intelligence will continue to improve. T

>AI can process more data than doctors have time to review, contains more knowledge than one person can study, and its intelligence will continue to improve. The key part of that statement is "continue to improve" we have no way of knowing where we are on the sigmoid curve of improvement. But right now. Today. Tools like this that spit out "you might have an autoimmune disease" aren't helping. Until they improve dramatically, the most likely outcome is that doctors get even more overwhelmed with people who think they have an auto immune disorder, but don't.

tempaccount420 2y ago
I think a lot of people have lost trust in doctors. You need to do your own research if you want to get the best treatment (especially when dealing with dentists). I don't think it's unreasonable to use AI as part of that research.
- awkwardpotato 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sarchertech 2y ago
    I mean a lot of people have lost trust in doctors, but then again a lot of people have decided that vaccines are created by Bill Gates to mind control them.
    - codr7 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - spoaceman7777 2y ago
        Very true. My guinea worm used to tap out a valid Windows product registration key in morse code on demand. Then Bill went and shut him up :(
        codr7 2y ago
        You still can't see it, can you? Africa is where all the resources are, we just have to get rid of all the pesky people standing in the way.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamredwoods 2y ago
    I think there is a movement against science, largely from the COVID epidemic, but I would like to see numbers. I also believe for science, there are a lot of bad actors out on the internet publishing inaccurate information (ivermectin, flat earth, etc).
- sarchertech 2y ago
  People are really bad at doing their own research and diagnosing themselves. I'm much more medically knowledgeable than the average person. I'm reasonably smart, and interested in the subject. And then I married a doctor. But even given all of those things, I'm very bad a diagnosing myself. I once swore that I had Giardia. I read dozens of papers and case studies. A close family member of mine was also having some similar GI symptoms at the time, and I even calculated the probability that our symptoms were independent. After that was ruled out from testing and I kept having stomach pain, I did more research. I was pretty sure I had stomach cancer. Eventually I got scoped--gastritis. Took a PPI for a little bit and it cleared right up. Gastritis wasn't even something that I had considered. It showed up in my search results, but because it wasn't a serious problem, I didn't focus on it.
  - roflchoppa 2y ago
    My sister had an experience where she went to the doctor multiple times because she had felt something “off” about her health, fatigue, small aches in her chest. Multiple times she was turned down for breast cancer screenings, she was told that she was too young (33 at the time). It was not until she had requested that the doctor write a note of their denial, along with reasoning, that they finally gave her some screenings. It was stage 2(3?), it had affected several lymph-nodes, but she was lucky that she persisted and did not just say “oh ya it’s fatigue”. When I ask her about how she knew, it’s always the same response, that it was just a feeling, that she knew something was not normal.
    - sarchertech 2y ago
      Yeah it's definitely possible. And it's terrible if you or someone you love is in that situation. But for the vast majority of people feeling off, tired, and some small aches is going to be nothing. There are costs to testing, financial and otherwise. For example you take someones family history, and other risk factors into account. There is a 1/100,000 chance that they have cancer. Then you add in the symptoms, fatigue, and minor aches and pains. That brings it to a 1/50,00 chance. We don't have the money, technicians, or machines to run an MRI on everyone who shows up to the doctor with a problem that has a 1/50,000 chance of being cancer. Then for many tests, with such a low prior probability, a positive test has a higher chance of being a false positive. So now you patients with massive anxiety out over a positive that has high chance of being a false positive. And you need to send them or further more invasive anymore expensive tests, that have real risks of harm.
- jasonjayr 2y ago
  IMHO, the REAL problem is not the individual doctors, it's the system we seem to have implemented to dole out "health care" as if it's a product that has to be rationed according to some metric. I've met doctors that are passionate, but are hamstrung by "the process". The hospital has policies, the insurance company has policies, local health departmen thas policies, whatever it is. I hate that "some process" needs to be in place to keep things in check, lest we end up with patients abusing things, or doctors abusing things (SURGERY ALL THE THINGS, for example). I think it's "the process" we have lost trust in. Individual people really do want to do good things for each other. But "the process" sadly has an awful lot of inertia, and doesn't make it easy to change.
  - malcolmgreaves 2y ago
    Precisely right. The corporate takeover of medicine is dangerous. Private equity firms are buying up hospitals and then illegally shutting them down to cash out. (Yes, I’ve seen this happen first hand. I’ve also read about other cases.) Another example of small local governments getting railroaded by corporations that have more money and lawyers.
    - nradov 2y ago
      How does shutting down a hospital allow a PE firm to "cash out"? Let's see some actual numbers on that, not vague claims about tax write-offs. Sometimes PE firms take on too much debt as part of acquiring a hospital and paying out a special dividend to shareholders. But if the hospital later fails due to being unable to make debt payments then the PE firm takes a loss on their remaining equity stake; they would always prefer to keep it running as a going concern so that they can sell it for an additional profit later. There is a legitimate issue with concentrated ownership of provider organizations in some regions. More antitrust enforcement is needed to protect consumers but unfortunately that seems unlikely.
      - bbreier 2y ago
        I would say in your toy example the hospital has been shutdown due to the PE firm "cashing out" excessively
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cameldrv 2y ago
  A lot of it is just that: a) The knowledge is democratized on the internet (albeit often without proper context, and with somewhat limited accuracy) b) You just care a lot more about your own, or a loved one's health/life and are willing to put a lot more effort than a doctor can or an insurance company is willing to pay for. You may not have a medical degree, but if you're willing to put in 40 hours doing research and your condition is even somewhat unusual, you can probably exceed the knowledge of your doctor about your specific condition.
  - adamredwoods 2y ago
    Regarding b) there's a term "advocating for one's health" and yes, doctors are fully aware of it. >> you can probably exceed the knowledge of your doctor about your specific condition. It depends on the doctor. That's why in the US patients first see a general practitioner, then are referred to a specialist. I've met some less knowledgeable doctors for my condition, but I don't discredit them for it. It's a difficult profession. Plus "doing research on your own" is not a bad idea, but if one deep dives and starts believing ivermectin cures everything, well, I'd say they did poor research, and poor research can be worse than listening to a doctor.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  "Do your own research" has turned into codeword for "Open yourself up to quackery." Nobody uses it to mean do actual research. It really means: Go onto YouTube or search and find all the various Herbal-this and Natural-that and Abc-Oils and Xyz-Supplements that confirm your suspicions that doctors are lying, and that managed to SEO their way to the top. Or, more recently, go onto your favorite political echo chamber and trust medical advice from pundits. When I need my car fixed, I don't go to the local psychic or consult Fox News. I go to a mechanic.
makehistory 2y ago
This has a simple benefit: There are cases where better quality medical services can be received with less cost (time and money).
- moralestapia 2y ago
  Why would this be downvoted? This is 100% true. The medical shills are working hard on this thread.
vonneumannstan 2y ago
>The key part of that statement is "continue to improve" we have no way of knowing where we are on the sigmoid curve of improvement. Such a tired take. What we do know is we are not on the flattening part and literally every company working on these technologies is saying there is no end in sight.
- sarchertech 2y ago
  >literally every company working on these technologies is saying there is no end in sight. Literally every company making money selling Foobars is saying there's no end in sight selling Foobars?
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
  Indeed, it’s tiring to have to keep correcting uneducated AI bros. Such is the consequences of unchecked capitalism finding a new shiny toy that it wants to suck the value out of.
- sensanaty 2y ago
  The people currently enjoying a bajillion dollars of investor funding say the tool making them a bajillion dollars has no end in sight, you don't say...
  - vonneumannstan 2y ago
    If you've got evidence the curves are flattening lets all see it. Otherwise it actually does make sense to update when everyone at these companies tells you they aren't flattening and might even be bending upward.
dylan604 2y ago
> Tools like this that spit out WebMD has been like this well before current iterations of LLMs. Pretty much any symptom you looked up would very meme-like say "it could be cancer". Only, it wasn't trying to be a meme. I always saw it more of a CYA on webMD's part though, without trying to sound authoritative like LLMs do.
- Angostura 2y ago
  You might enjoy the opening of the comic novel Three Men In A Boat, where the narrator reads a medical dictionary and finds he is suffering from every malady listed apart from- much to his annoyance- housemaid’s knee. https://gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm https://gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm Published 1889
  - gopalv 2y ago
    The doctor's prescription is probably applicable even to this day. Food, bitter beer, exercise, early bedtimes and "stop stuffing your head with things you don't understand". > I followed the directions, with the happy result—speaking for myself—that my life was preserved, and is still going on. I read the book as part of my English - II in school, but no part stuck to me as much as the Liver cure for children.
thelittleone 2y ago
I've witnessed 4 medical emergencies, with 3 being life-threatening. Each case at different hospitals, and each incorrectly diagnosed. The most dramatic was in 2009. My wife was admitted to emergency at 22 weeks pregnant with severe cramping, nausea, and severe IBS like symptoms. She couldn't keep food down, leading to daily stomach pumping and eventually IV nutrition. The episodes started every few days but grew more intense and frequent. After 8 days, the first doctor seemed lost. When I asked about a second opinion, he lectured me that it was "his call to make, not mine." That killed any trust - I asked him not to return. The next doctor, an eccentric but brilliant GI specialist, ordered new tests. I obsessively googled every result (partly to cope, partly to help). When he suggested a motility drug, my research found a case of spontaneous abortion linked to it. We declined. Three weeks in, I noticed something odd in her lab work - different blood counts from different locations. More late-night googling led me to placental percreta, where the placenta grows through the uterus and attaches to other organs. Several ultrasounds proved inconclusive. With daily episodes now and my wife deteriorating, we insisted on an emergency C-section despite warnings about our baby's lung development. During the procedure, even with an epidural, she went into extreme pain. Her eyes rolled back, the surgical team's demeanor changed instantly, and I was told to leave the OR. Waiting outside for who knows how long. I knew the risks. Some noise down the hallway, a few nurses called me over. They were wheeling a humidicrib down the hall to the ICU. Little champs whole leg was no longer than my pinky finger. They took him into the ICU and sent me to the hospital room to wait. The OB arrived an hour or so later and explained she was alive and they had to remove something. He took out a photo and and showed how the placenta had indeed broken through her uterus and attached to the intestine. He then pointed to a particular point and explained how it would have ruptured at any moment. The decision to push for the C-section likely saved both lives. Our son, never developed lung issues. Lots of luck. This experience showed me how even amazing doctors, overwhelmed with cases and data, can miss crucial connections. In 2009, they didn't have the tools to correlate data the way I could with google search-fu. AI diagnosis tools will save lives - they can make these connections faster and more reliably than either doctors or desperate husbands with search engines. And it will just improve over time.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Terrifying story and example. Im glad it worked out and I think there are a number of factors that this illustrates. One is the time and incentive differential between doctors and the patient. Im guessing you and your wife spent multiple magnitudes of order more time trying to get to find a cause. You have one wife and one unborn child, while doctors have dozens of patients a day. A doctor can never devote as much time and emotion as a patient. This isn't a condemnation, but a statement about reality. Medical training and experience can reduce the impact, but not overcome it. It is a reason why someone can't entirely outsource their heath to the medical system, and something that I think people miss when they set medical expectations. From the perspective of the medical system, it is a numbers game, where the optimal number of deaths is non-zero. More time and effort spent in one area means less in another. Saving one life might cost two others. Because of this, I think it is most useful to discuss ways to increase medical efficiency. Better data transfer, better collation, better processes. AI/big data review has a place in this, but we should be aware of it's limitations, particularly on the data it doesn't capture.
cameldrv 2y ago
I don't know about autoimmune diseases, but I had someone I care about that had a rare (1/50,000) bone disease recently that Claude was able to successfully diagnose, suggest appropriate labwork, and give treatment and prognosis information for. I was seriously impressed. The doctors eventually arrived at the same conclusion, but it was multiple specialists and it took them weeks.

tempaccount420 2y ago

I think a lot of people have lost trust in doctors. You need to do your own research if you want to get the best treatment (especially when dealing with dentists). I don't think it's unreasonable to use AI as part of that research.

awkwardpotato 2y ago
[flagged]
- sarchertech 2y ago
  I mean a lot of people have lost trust in doctors, but then again a lot of people have decided that vaccines are created by Bill Gates to mind control them.
  - codr7 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - spoaceman7777 2y ago
      Very true. My guinea worm used to tap out a valid Windows product registration key in morse code on demand. Then Bill went and shut him up :(
      - codr7 2y ago
        You still can't see it, can you? Africa is where all the resources are, we just have to get rid of all the pesky people standing in the way.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  I think there is a movement against science, largely from the COVID epidemic, but I would like to see numbers. I also believe for science, there are a lot of bad actors out on the internet publishing inaccurate information (ivermectin, flat earth, etc).
sarchertech 2y ago
People are really bad at doing their own research and diagnosing themselves. I'm much more medically knowledgeable than the average person. I'm reasonably smart, and interested in the subject. And then I married a doctor. But even given all of those things, I'm very bad a diagnosing myself. I once swore that I had Giardia. I read dozens of papers and case studies. A close family member of mine was also having some similar GI symptoms at the time, and I even calculated the probability that our symptoms were independent. After that was ruled out from testing and I kept having stomach pain, I did more research. I was pretty sure I had stomach cancer. Eventually I got scoped--gastritis. Took a PPI for a little bit and it cleared right up. Gastritis wasn't even something that I had considered. It showed up in my search results, but because it wasn't a serious problem, I didn't focus on it.
- roflchoppa 2y ago
  My sister had an experience where she went to the doctor multiple times because she had felt something “off” about her health, fatigue, small aches in her chest. Multiple times she was turned down for breast cancer screenings, she was told that she was too young (33 at the time). It was not until she had requested that the doctor write a note of their denial, along with reasoning, that they finally gave her some screenings. It was stage 2(3?), it had affected several lymph-nodes, but she was lucky that she persisted and did not just say “oh ya it’s fatigue”. When I ask her about how she knew, it’s always the same response, that it was just a feeling, that she knew something was not normal.
  - sarchertech 2y ago
    Yeah it's definitely possible. And it's terrible if you or someone you love is in that situation. But for the vast majority of people feeling off, tired, and some small aches is going to be nothing. There are costs to testing, financial and otherwise. For example you take someones family history, and other risk factors into account. There is a 1/100,000 chance that they have cancer. Then you add in the symptoms, fatigue, and minor aches and pains. That brings it to a 1/50,00 chance. We don't have the money, technicians, or machines to run an MRI on everyone who shows up to the doctor with a problem that has a 1/50,000 chance of being cancer. Then for many tests, with such a low prior probability, a positive test has a higher chance of being a false positive. So now you patients with massive anxiety out over a positive that has high chance of being a false positive. And you need to send them or further more invasive anymore expensive tests, that have real risks of harm.
jasonjayr 2y ago
IMHO, the REAL problem is not the individual doctors, it's the system we seem to have implemented to dole out "health care" as if it's a product that has to be rationed according to some metric. I've met doctors that are passionate, but are hamstrung by "the process". The hospital has policies, the insurance company has policies, local health departmen thas policies, whatever it is. I hate that "some process" needs to be in place to keep things in check, lest we end up with patients abusing things, or doctors abusing things (SURGERY ALL THE THINGS, for example). I think it's "the process" we have lost trust in. Individual people really do want to do good things for each other. But "the process" sadly has an awful lot of inertia, and doesn't make it easy to change.
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
  Precisely right. The corporate takeover of medicine is dangerous. Private equity firms are buying up hospitals and then illegally shutting them down to cash out. (Yes, I’ve seen this happen first hand. I’ve also read about other cases.) Another example of small local governments getting railroaded by corporations that have more money and lawyers.
  - nradov 2y ago
    How does shutting down a hospital allow a PE firm to "cash out"? Let's see some actual numbers on that, not vague claims about tax write-offs. Sometimes PE firms take on too much debt as part of acquiring a hospital and paying out a special dividend to shareholders. But if the hospital later fails due to being unable to make debt payments then the PE firm takes a loss on their remaining equity stake; they would always prefer to keep it running as a going concern so that they can sell it for an additional profit later. There is a legitimate issue with concentrated ownership of provider organizations in some regions. More antitrust enforcement is needed to protect consumers but unfortunately that seems unlikely.
    - bbreier 2y ago
      I would say in your toy example the hospital has been shutdown due to the PE firm "cashing out" excessively
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cameldrv 2y ago
A lot of it is just that: a) The knowledge is democratized on the internet (albeit often without proper context, and with somewhat limited accuracy) b) You just care a lot more about your own, or a loved one's health/life and are willing to put a lot more effort than a doctor can or an insurance company is willing to pay for. You may not have a medical degree, but if you're willing to put in 40 hours doing research and your condition is even somewhat unusual, you can probably exceed the knowledge of your doctor about your specific condition.
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  Regarding b) there's a term "advocating for one's health" and yes, doctors are fully aware of it. >> you can probably exceed the knowledge of your doctor about your specific condition. It depends on the doctor. That's why in the US patients first see a general practitioner, then are referred to a specialist. I've met some less knowledgeable doctors for my condition, but I don't discredit them for it. It's a difficult profession. Plus "doing research on your own" is not a bad idea, but if one deep dives and starts believing ivermectin cures everything, well, I'd say they did poor research, and poor research can be worse than listening to a doctor.
ryandrake 2y ago
"Do your own research" has turned into codeword for "Open yourself up to quackery." Nobody uses it to mean do actual research. It really means: Go onto YouTube or search and find all the various Herbal-this and Natural-that and Abc-Oils and Xyz-Supplements that confirm your suspicions that doctors are lying, and that managed to SEO their way to the top. Or, more recently, go onto your favorite political echo chamber and trust medical advice from pundits. When I need my car fixed, I don't go to the local psychic or consult Fox News. I go to a mechanic.

makehistory 2y ago

This has a simple benefit: There are cases where better quality medical services can be received with less cost (time and money).

moralestapia 2y ago
Why would this be downvoted? This is 100% true. The medical shills are working hard on this thread.

vonneumannstan 2y ago

>The key part of that statement is "continue to improve" we have no way of knowing where we are on the sigmoid curve of improvement. Such a tired take. What we do know is we are not on the flattening part and literally every company working on these technologies is saying there is no end in sight.

sarchertech 2y ago
>literally every company working on these technologies is saying there is no end in sight. Literally every company making money selling Foobars is saying there's no end in sight selling Foobars?
malcolmgreaves 2y ago
Indeed, it’s tiring to have to keep correcting uneducated AI bros. Such is the consequences of unchecked capitalism finding a new shiny toy that it wants to suck the value out of.
sensanaty 2y ago
The people currently enjoying a bajillion dollars of investor funding say the tool making them a bajillion dollars has no end in sight, you don't say...
- vonneumannstan 2y ago
  If you've got evidence the curves are flattening lets all see it. Otherwise it actually does make sense to update when everyone at these companies tells you they aren't flattening and might even be bending upward.

dylan604 2y ago

> Tools like this that spit out WebMD has been like this well before current iterations of LLMs. Pretty much any symptom you looked up would very meme-like say "it could be cancer". Only, it wasn't trying to be a meme. I always saw it more of a CYA on webMD's part though, without trying to sound authoritative like LLMs do.

Angostura 2y ago
You might enjoy the opening of the comic novel Three Men In A Boat, where the narrator reads a medical dictionary and finds he is suffering from every malady listed apart from- much to his annoyance- housemaid’s knee. https://gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm https://gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm Published 1889
- gopalv 2y ago
  The doctor's prescription is probably applicable even to this day. Food, bitter beer, exercise, early bedtimes and "stop stuffing your head with things you don't understand". > I followed the directions, with the happy result—speaking for myself—that my life was preserved, and is still going on. I read the book as part of my English - II in school, but no part stuck to me as much as the Liver cure for children.

thelittleone 2y ago

I've witnessed 4 medical emergencies, with 3 being life-threatening. Each case at different hospitals, and each incorrectly diagnosed. The most dramatic was in 2009. My wife was admitted to emergency at 22 weeks pregnant with severe cramping, nausea, and severe IBS like symptoms. She couldn't keep food down, leading to daily stomach pumping and eventually IV nutrition. The episodes started every few days but grew more intense and frequent. After 8 days, the first doctor seemed lost. When I asked about a second opinion, he lectured me that it was "his call to make, not mine." That killed any trust - I asked him not to return. The next doctor, an eccentric but brilliant GI specialist, ordered new tests. I obsessively googled every result (partly to cope, partly to help). When he suggested a motility drug, my research found a case of spontaneous abortion linked to it. We declined. Three weeks in, I noticed something odd in her lab work - different blood counts from different locations. More late-night googling led me to placental percreta, where the placenta grows through the uterus and attaches to other organs. Several ultrasounds proved inconclusive. With daily episodes now and my wife deteriorating, we insisted on an emergency C-section despite warnings about our baby's lung development. During the procedure, even with an epidural, she went into extreme pain. Her eyes rolled back, the surgical team's demeanor changed instantly, and I was told to leave the OR. Waiting outside for who knows how long. I knew the risks. Some noise down the hallway, a few nurses called me over. They were wheeling a humidicrib down the hall to the ICU. Little champs whole leg was no longer than my pinky finger. They took him into the ICU and sent me to the hospital room to wait. The OB arrived an hour or so later and explained she was alive and they had to remove something. He took out a photo and and showed how the placenta had indeed broken through her uterus and attached to the intestine. He then pointed to a particular point and explained how it would have ruptured at any moment. The decision to push for the C-section likely saved both lives. Our son, never developed lung issues. Lots of luck. This experience showed me how even amazing doctors, overwhelmed with cases and data, can miss crucial connections. In 2009, they didn't have the tools to correlate data the way I could with google search-fu. AI diagnosis tools will save lives - they can make these connections faster and more reliably than either doctors or desperate husbands with search engines. And it will just improve over time.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Terrifying story and example. Im glad it worked out and I think there are a number of factors that this illustrates. One is the time and incentive differential between doctors and the patient. Im guessing you and your wife spent multiple magnitudes of order more time trying to get to find a cause. You have one wife and one unborn child, while doctors have dozens of patients a day. A doctor can never devote as much time and emotion as a patient. This isn't a condemnation, but a statement about reality. Medical training and experience can reduce the impact, but not overcome it. It is a reason why someone can't entirely outsource their heath to the medical system, and something that I think people miss when they set medical expectations. From the perspective of the medical system, it is a numbers game, where the optimal number of deaths is non-zero. More time and effort spent in one area means less in another. Saving one life might cost two others. Because of this, I think it is most useful to discuss ways to increase medical efficiency. Better data transfer, better collation, better processes. AI/big data review has a place in this, but we should be aware of it's limitations, particularly on the data it doesn't capture.

cameldrv 2y ago

I don't know about autoimmune diseases, but I had someone I care about that had a rare (1/50,000) bone disease recently that Claude was able to successfully diagnose, suggest appropriate labwork, and give treatment and prognosis information for. I was seriously impressed. The doctors eventually arrived at the same conclusion, but it was multiple specialists and it took them weeks.