Computers Shown To Be Better Than Docs At Diagnosing, Prescribing Treatment

Lucas123 writes "Applying the same technology used for voice recognition and credit card fraud detection to medical treatments could cut healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes by almost 50%, according to new research. Scientists at Indiana University found that using patient data with machine-learning algorithms can drastically improve both the cost and quality of healthcare through simulation modeling.The artificial intelligence models used for diagnosing and treating patients obtained a 30% to 35% increase in positive patient outcomes, the research found. This is not the first time AI has been used to diagnose and suggest treatments. Last year, IBM announced that its Watson supercomputer would be used in evaluating evidence-based cancer treatment options for physicians, driving the decision-making process down to a matter of seconds."

Comments

Modern luddites

[MPAB]

An expected outcome. First machines become good and cheap at performing manual labor, then it's lowly qualified jobs such as sorting stuff or basic accounting.
In a few years, liberal professions will fall. Our salaries (I'm a doctor) have been diving as more and more people around the world can afford a career and achieve a good enough level to perform as a doctor or an engineer.
Creative and risk-taking careers will resist for a longer time.
We can hope for a future of working machines and humans enjoying themselves. The other option will be cheap-ass humans with no way of earning a living whatsoever.

Re:Modern luddites

[Garridan]

Meh. You can be replaced by sufficiently advanced algorithms. I'm mathematician, FFS. There are already automated theorem provers which can solve undergrad-level problems. As computers evolve, they'll be just as good as people and loads cheaper than people at everything we do, up to and including the creation of art.

If we progress to the point where all of our jobs can be done by computers... what should we do? At the point where artificial intelligence becomes genuine intelligence, it will rapidly outpace human intelligence. This is evolution. We are breeding our replacements.

Because doctors are humans.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with doctors is their ego. Being a nurse for quite some time Ive seen countless doctors come through the hospital that do not treat a patient properly, ignore patient complaints, dont treat problems aggresively enough, are too passive, and so on and the vast majority of them refuse to do otherwise because of their ego. They are doctors, no one should question them and they hate it when you do and when you do they dig their heels in and dont budge. Doctors are also human so they get tired of their job, they get lazy, they stop caring after awhile, they worry more about what they will do later than the problem at hand, they stay up too late.

Ive also seen countless times people who swear by these doctors and will accuse of them of fault simply because the doctor has been nice to them. A doctor who is friendly can do no wrong in a patients eyes. Or a patient has some common problem that even a moron could treat, then when the doctor fixes them suddenly they become godlike.

Personally I would trust the diagnosis of a machine that has more information programmed into it than a thousand doctors do collectively from allover the world.

A machine can be a doctor because thats how doctors are trained, they are trained to be machines. They treat the problem, they do not treat the person. Treating the person is a nurses job. And treating the problem is simply nothing more than deduction. If patient has multiple problems then you take those numbers and it will lead you to the correct answer. Thats all being a doctor is, you look at the signs and symptoms, then you add them alltogether and you get the answer as to what the cause is. Its all a forumla and nothing more, there is no great mystery to it.

Same old objection

[pclminion]

Apart from doctors who will understandably not want to be rendered obsolete (and they won't be -- the computer can only prescribe a treatment, not administer it!), the main objection that would be raised to this is "What if the computer makes a mistake?" For some reason, people are really bad at understanding that even though the computer might make a mistake, it will make mistakes at a lower rate than a human. This is the same problem with computer-driven automobiles. Yes, the computer might screw something up and kill somebody, but this should happen at a much lower rate than caused by human drivers -- however, because the rate isn't EXACTLY ZERO it is seen as completely unacceptable, even though this is an irrational position to maintain.

Drug Companies doing away with doctors

[anthony_greer]

This sort of thing is just what big pharma wants, no human interaction and careful consideration, just a pill dispenser...symptom a + symptom B == Pill 2...
How much you wanna bet this thing always prescribes expensive non generic drugs and never tries the 50-70 year old known treatments that are usually the first steps in treatment before new expensive drugs are prescribed.

Also, anyone notice the change in medical advertising and communications, they never say "ask your doctor" any more, its ask your prescriber, or ask your provider...like they want to dis-intermediate doctors and are getting the public ready.

It's just another tool

[TheCrazyMonkey]

And will the system consider the patients age/cost to treat/insurance level/likelihood of patient paying future insurance premiums to make up for expenses?

It will if you program it to. Things like this are tools. As a relatively young doctor (resident) I welcome things like this. Every doctor I know uses reference material, some are printed on dead trees and some are electronic. Today, there's not much difference. But the point it is that there's too much medical knowledge for one person to keep it all in their head at one time. If something like this were to come to market it wouldn't be replacing doctors, it would be augmenting them. Machines do what we tell them to, always have and (hopefully) always will. False rivalries like this completely miss the point. I would love to have a computer algorithm that could correctly diagnose 99% of the time even if it were flagrently wrong the other 1%. That's why humans are in the loop.

Re:It's just another tool

[quantumghost]

As an attending physician, I have several issues with this article.

A) the slashdot title is a little sensationalistic....never did TFA mention diagnosis without a physician in the loop.

B) by what standards was the final diagnosis discovered (i.e. the gold standard)? Another physician? Another program? Was the trial blinded?

C) this article mentions only one disease process - depression, I fail to accept, blindly, that their results can be extrapolated - that is the crux of medical versus scientific research....see D. Not all diagnoses are obtained by just talking with a patient, in fact short of a psychiatric diagnosis, most require a physical exam....and a competent one. Suppose someone is obviously malingering and complaining about abdominal pain....this system would not pick up on malingering and would likely recommend an operation....a totally wrong diagnosis.

D) this is a retrospective study...in medicine, this is not adequate proof of effectiveness.....you need to perform a prospective trial, preferably with randomization and blinding to adequately prove your hypothesis for treatment. Actually, upon re-reading TFA...it was _simulations_ that were performed. This is hardly world class evidence.

E) cost savings were mentioned, but not long term outcomes....who cares if I saved 75% in the cost of treatment if the patient didn't get better in the end. (yes, short term were noted, but anyone who's ever been on long term therapy knows that the short term does not dictate the long term outcome.

F) In life threatening situations - those that require the most expedient decisions, often with less than complete information, this system would be useless because the patient would die in the time it takes you to input the facts.

G) not all situations are cut and dry. I am often consulted to make decisions about patients that are not addressed in any book. In fact, there may be only 1 or 2 journal articles about the problem, and often there are none. Making a decision treatment in the absence of an established precedent is not going to be one of this systems strengths...."Oh, I'm sorry, I can't help you....I just got the blue-screen of death from the program that was supposed to diagnose you!"

H) would this program tolerate patient autonomy? What happens when the patient refuses some or all of the initial treatment plan?

So, while I point out flaws, it is not to say that this is totally without merit....I am merely pointing out the obvious short coming of this article. In certain fields this could be very advantageous.

I will tell you that in my field, this computer program borders on useless. There is very little doubt about what my diagnosis is, and when I am in doubt, my best evidence is collected by doing something. And computers are really a long way away from matching my skill set. A lot of my diagnosis is made by touching the patient during the physical exam. That exam can completely revamp my decision that started based on the history. And, since I am the one performing procedures, I also would not have a machine dictate the exact method that I use - I am the one performing the operation, I do it the way that I know will result in a safe and effective outcome. In my case, I just don't really don't know what this system would provide to me for patients.