Do you think eventually we'll outsource medicine to computers?

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Much of medicine and treatment is based on evidence based medicine. Do you think in the future we'll have less doctors and more "computer kiosks" or other health professionals just plugging data into a computer and coming out with a diagnosis?

I'm thinking it might be more efficient as a whole.

 

[mook]

It seems like the hardest part about medicine is the diagnosis. A diagnosis comes from sifting through a vast array of mostly irrelevant information and narrowing it down to the best candidate or two for the right answer you need. That sounds a lot like a search engine to me.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Things like the Minute Clinics:
http://www.minuteclinic.com/

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

It seems like the hardest part about medicine is the diagnosis. A diagnosis comes from sifting through a vast array of mostly irrelevant information and narrowing it down to the best candidate or two for the right answer you need. That sounds a lot like a search engine to me.

Yes. Treatment protocols can be determined using a standard format...maybe overall there may be some errors, but I think they'll probably be near levels of errors that physicians would make anyways.

Obviously you can't get rid of doctors. But perhaps doing things like outsourcing data to another country for a diagnosis would be more cost effective. Lab results, treatment plans, etc.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Think of it. Hiring low paid, highly trained doctors in somewhere in India, like a call center who take video calls from a healthcare worker in this country to come up with a treatment plan. A doctor's call center...that would be something.

 

[mook]

I think it could be much more sophisticated than what you describe.

Imagine once a year you go in for a CT Scan because everybody now does it. This scan takes millions of pictures cross-secting your body. Then a database compares the pictures year-to-year. It sees a small tumor emerging one year that wasn't there the year before. This is automatically compared against a database of similar types of tumors, with the odds of it developing into a major problem calculated. If the odds seem high enough, you get an email with the info and a biopsy is scheduled. At no point in this process is an actual MD consulted.

Or say you have sophisticated medical records that show on your mom's side there is a history of strokes. You are also left-handed, which a database shows has a 4.5% higher rate of a certain type of stroke. Your CT scan shows that you are 35 lbs heavier than you were two years ago, and a genetic test performed on you at birth has you flagged as a 10% higher risk of diabetes. A database takes all these factors into account and calculates the optimal drug that will not create a risk of stroke but nudges you away from diabetic risk, given your weight gain. An MD reads the report, shrugs and rubber stamps the prescription. The system fabricates a pill, but also packs into it 26% of the vitamin C it notices you've been leaving out of your diet, plus an anti-inflamatory to take care of that ankle twist it happened to notice.

Now, say all these databases of patient medical history were linked. Suddenly doctoral students and pharmaceutical companies can run all sorts of on-the-fly studies to find correlations. Maybe women who are 18-23 who take one aspirin a day are 37% less likely to have cervical cancer at 45. There's no way to get at that level of data right now without conducting a major study, but if you start connecting the databases of peoples' medical history science could be exposed to all sorts of crazy correlations.

In a decade or two I think a janitor will be able to do most of what House does. The real insights will come in these correlative studies. But even there you could probably develop software that sifts through the countless possible correlations to find the ones that are really interesting.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I think so. There's a huge amount of innovation to be made in medicine using technology.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I'm wondering if in the future, you can do a medical consult on your phone or an ipad. That would be something. Use the camera to send videos, etc.

 

[chris_in_pdx]

There are people who FREAK OUT when you talk about sharing medical records. Some are militant about keeping medical histories and information private. So while I think all these ideas about pooling everyone's medical records is perhaps a good thing, some people only see forced euthanasia and higher levels of abortions/gene sequencing in embryos.

 

[chris_in_pdx]

I think so. There's a huge amount of innovation to be made in medicine using technology.

The biggest future breakthrough in medicine, in my opinion, is non-invasive portable scanning equipment, like a Star Trek tricorder. That will become science fact sooner than you think.

 

[Ed O]

Implants. Or medicines that have nanotechnology with the ability to monitor your health on a myriad of levels. You can tell when you're too drunk to drive or have hypertension or whatever.

No need to even go to the doctor.

If we don't blow ourselves up, yes. Technology will dominate health care.

Ed O.

 

[mook]

There are people who FREAK OUT when you talk about sharing medical records. Some are militant about keeping medical histories and information private.

I think that's mostly a biproduct of living in a "pre-existing condition" culture. People don't want their insurance rates jacked because word gets out. Thanks to Obama, the term "pre-existing condition" is going to sound ridiculous to people in a few years. A nasty term of a bygone era.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I think that's mostly a biproduct of living in a "pre-existing condition" culture. People don't want their insurance rates jacked because word gets out. Thanks to Obama, the term "pre-existing condition" is going to sound ridiculous to people in a few years. A nasty term of a bygone era.

Why call it Insurance then? As soon as you get sick, buy "insurance", then cancel and repeat.

 

[mook]

Why call it Insurance then? As soon as you get sick, buy "insurance", then cancel and repeat.

Because of the mandates everybody will be required to have insurance. Man, this is health care reform 101.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Doctors and Nurses don't get viruses by looking at porn on the internet,

Computers do.

 

[BlazerWookee]

I hope not. My doctor's kinda hot. Small fingers, too.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

I hope not. My doctor's kinda hot. Small fingers, too.

 

[BlazerWookee]

You vicious bastard, lol.


Repped.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I seriously doubt within the next 100 years any of this will happen. The human body is too complex and there are too many variables. There is still way too much science doesn't understand about us to expect nanochips or whatever to essentially eliminate the need for doctors.

One of what is certainly could be a million examples is my daughter. At age 27 she ran 5 miles on a Monday, as was her usual daily habit. By Thursday she couldn't walk across a room without passing out. She was struck that fast with an incurable and fatal disease. Nobody knows why it happens and thus far it is unpredictable. Some people take medicine and manage to live a semi normal life. For others the medicine has no effect and they either asphyxiate to death within a few years or die of an enlarged heart. Why? No one knows and no one can predict who will and will not respond to what type of medicine. We'd have to predict, diagnose and treat millions of things like this before we can ever place medicine in the hands of computers.

Besides, Microsoft won't let us.

 

[mook]

I seriously doubt within the next 100 years any of this will happen. The internet is too complex and there are too many variables. There is still way too much documentation to expect search engines or whatever to essentially eliminate the need for librarians.

 

[mook]

One of what is certainly could be a million examples is my daughter. At age 27 she ran 5 miles on a Monday, as was her usual daily habit. By Thursday she couldn't walk across a room without passing out. She was struck that fast with an incurable and fatal disease. Nobody knows why it happens and thus far it is unpredictable. Some people take medicine and manage to live a semi normal life. For others the medicine has no effect and they either asphyxiate to death within a few years or die of an enlarged heart. Why? No one knows and no one can predict who will and will not respond to what type of medicine. We'd have to predict, diagnose and treat millions of things like this before we can ever place medicine in the hands of computers.

Man, I'm sorry to hear that about your daughter. I never knew.

Still, though, we trust computers in finance and space travel and a hundred other fields to make calculations that are way too complex and variable for any one person to work out with a calculator. We only still rely on doctors instincts and experience so much because:
- We haven't systemetized the data collection in ways that would make automating it more rational
- We haven't developed the software that can implement the sort of things I describe
- Society hasn't come around to accepting these kind of concepts

Honestly, in 1990 did you really imagine the internet economy would come about? I sincerely doubt it. That was just 20 years ago.

Yet you are willing to predict right now what technologies won't be available 99 years from now. Do you realize how absurd your prediction sounds?

 

[Minstrel]

This is pretty interesting stuff. The medical technology that I was reading about and seemed quite fascinating was using nanotechnology (nanobots) that can be injected into the body to repair cells at the molecular level. Pretty much everything that kills us, that isn't violent (like a gun shot or car accident, etc), is due to damage to the cells...including aging. If we can continually repair cells back to new, we could freeze the aging process, the slow decay of our bodies.

That's pretty impressive and apparently not all that crazy based on what we already know.

 

[barfo]

I hope not. My doctor's kinda hot. Small fingers, too.

I guess that's his finger in your nose in the avatar, then?

barfo

 

[Ed O]

This is pretty interesting stuff. The medical technology that I was reading about and seemed quite fascinating was using nanotechnology (nanobots) that can be injected into the body to repair cells at the molecular level. Pretty much everything that kills us, that isn't violent (like a gun shot or car accident, etc), is due to damage to the cells...including aging. If we can continually repair cells back to new, we could freeze the aging process, the slow decay of our bodies.

That's pretty impressive and apparently not all that crazy based on what we already know.

This is the thing that I think. Nanotechnology is going to hit us like a ton of bricks at some point, for better or worse. Once it's in play, everything changes.

Ed O.

 

[mook]

I've read some articles and watched some programs on nanotechnology, and it always seems so incredibly scifi to me. But there really is just a ton of buzz about it, and not just in medicine. Kind of reminds me a little of the internet in 1996.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Honestly, in 1990 did you really imagine the internet economy would come about? I sincerely doubt it. That was just 20 years ago.

Yet you are willing to predict right now what technologies won't be available 99 years from now. Do you realize how absurd your prediction sounds?

Actually, you are right in that I never would have imagined how rapidly computers and technology came upon us and some of the things that technology has accomplished.

But I will defend myself in that I simply think the human body is too complex and there is so much scientists don't know (and may never really know) to think computers in and of themselves will be running medicine and nearly eliminating the need for doctors within 100 years. I mean, 100 years ago it was predicted we'd have universal space travel and cities under the sea. Well, those seem far easier than eliminating doctors and we're woefully behind in those areas and probably still won't be doing those things in another 100 years.

 

[mook]

The difference is demand. There really isn't much market demand for space travel or cities under the sea. They'd be nice, and sure there are some big fans out there of those ideas. But if I have to choose between a nice prime rib dinner or dropping bucks toward one of those, I'm going with the prime rib dinner most of the time.

There is a much higher market demand for extending life by 30, 50 or 100 years. Pretty much everybody on the planet would be a customer for that one.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

The difference is demand. There really isn't much market demand for space travel or cities under the sea. They'd be nice, and sure there are some big fans out there of those ideas. But if I have to choose between a nice prime rib dinner or dropping bucks toward one of those, I'm going with the prime rib dinner most of the time.

There is a much higher market demand for extending life by 30, 50 or 100 years. Pretty much everybody on the planet would be a customer for that one.

Yeah, I thought about that and was hoping you'd miss it.

 

[mook]

Yeah, I thought about that and was hoping you'd miss it.

It's all good. It was an interesting example to think about.

I love thinking about technology and medicine.

 

[Minstrel]

The other point I'd make about flying cars and underwater cities and tourist space travel is that technology has arguably advanced just as impressively, just not in those particular directions. I think futurists (those who try to predict the future course of human development) are often wrong on the details, but technology does race along at that breakneck pace. A century ago, for example, people's vision of the future was that we'd have zeppelins carrying us from continent to continent. That never materialized, but we found even better solutions.

In fact, I'm very much a believer in the principle that the rate of technological increase is always accelerating. As much as technology has advanced in the last 20 years, it'll advance more in the next 20 years. And even more than that in the following 20 years. Which is why it's hard to use standards like "There's still so much we don't know" and "That system is so complex"...that may be true, but understanding and knowledge don't increase linearly, they increase exponentially.

I found this to be a very interesting book for those who are interested in a pretty reasonable and logical analysis of where nanotech, robotics and genetic engineering might take us, with examples of how the rate of technology is not linear:

http://www.amazon.com/Singularity-N...7889/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296849019&sr=8-1