AI is picking up speed and for analytical tasks merged with data bases of factual information, they are much quicker that a human.

For now, the answers they spit out need to be monitored by human medical professionals.
They can do this for a fraction of what a traditional doctors practice would charge. I suspect that medical practices are already doing some of the routine screening this way.
When I've had my recent blood work for my annual checkup, I get the results before I hear from doctor/caregiver.
I have used the simple AI online searches and the results I see there seem to be pretty much the same as the human answer I get. Learning how to phrase the questions is the key, much like the rapidly improving software will give better results.

This is much like the idea of self driving vehicles. Maybe not fully ready yet but it won't be long.

If you have ever worked or been treated in a large University medical center you will come to believe that medicine is much an Art as it is a Science. Intuition and experience are important.

Well, I don't think he's wrong. It's not here today, but it is coming.

We have a technological crisis coming in this world, and I don't think anyone has the answers.

As a society we disparage fast food workers and tell them to get a better job if they want to make more money. Well, they didn't get their 15 dollars an hour but they got replaced anyway. Self help kiosks replaced front line staff, AI systems have replaced drive through staff. There are restaurants in many countries that are totally automated.

We told journalists to learn to code when their jobs were replaced, and now it's hard to find real news in the sea of AI written and published clickbait. Learn to code wasn't safe though, AI driven vibe coding is starting to push out the people that actually do know how to code.

SKilled professions like doctors are feeling the push now too. Private practices have been all but killed off, and the huge providers left standing are making massive telehealth pushes. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see the Dr. on the other end of the screen is a computer instead of a doctor as soon as they can pull it off, quality of care be damned.

It creeps in slowly a few positions at a time, then a few industries at a time, but skilled and unskilled employment prospects are slowly being replaced by technology, and at some point that's going to cause a fundamental transformation of the world. I can't even imagine what that's going to look like. I'm hopefully too old to be affected by it too much, but I fear for the world my son might live in. I have no idea what the world is going to look like in 15-20 years as he becomes an adult, but I do know advancements are coming so fast that any of the advice I'd give him today will likely be irrelevant, save that he should strive to always learn new things and endeavor to always be as self sufficient as he possibly can.

Dr. Oz has a bad reputation for stealing other peoples work. I have seen several doctors claim that they were to appear on his show and they sent Dr. Oz their presentation of what they were going to talk about and Dr. Oz used their work in their absence.

How is AI going to put a tongue depressor in my mouth or have me turn my head and cough?

The AI is plugged into a robot. male or female?

^^^^^^^
That should be easily solved. The finger wave to check your prostate could be problematic.

Wife's doctor also uses teledoc type services, you are more likely to get a PA than the Doc, last few visits were over the phone.

She was making an appointment for a review of results of a test and a medicare wellness. The gal on the phone told her that they had reduced the allowed time per appointment and that they might not be able to do both in one appointment.

Things like this, healthcare reducing times, will drive medical companies to innovate, and AI is unavoidable. The advantage will be unlimited appointment access, no having Doctors gone for two weeks on safari, no offices closed at noon on Fridays. Get sick, click an icon and input your symptons, eventually you'll have a medical device at home that BT's to your phone your heart rate, pulse, temp, and prostate size...

The advantage "should" be that if you need to physically see a doctor, appointments should be easier to get as many visits will be AI.

HRK, part of your wife’s situation is about billing. Providers will often not be paid for multipart visits..they are often required to break them up due to insurance payments. Sucks, but completely true.
I’m also aware of physicians who have their keystrokes monitored. Literally. To see how productive they are. I truly miss days of past where doctors used intuition and experience to help them vs instrumentation.

quote:

Originally posted by irreverent:
HRK, part of your wife’s situation is about billing. Providers will often not be paid for multipart visits..they are often required to break them up due to insurance payments. Sucks, but completely true.
I’m also aware of physicians who have their keystrokes monitored. Literally. To see how productive they are. I truly miss days of past where doctors used intuition and experience to help them vs instrumentation.

Agree, both Medicare/Medicaid, Private Insurance and the mega Health Orgs that have bought out private practices are setting the rules on how long a physician can work with a patient.

It's a shame

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Near future or distant, like it or not, it will happen.

Yep, it WILL happen, 100%.

I was at a Digital Orthopaedics conference in 2019 and the robotic tech was off the charts even back then. I can imagine the recent and upcoming AI tech will put it even closer to adopting in the upcoming years.

^^^ Sounds a lot better to me than getting my next colonoscopy from a crossdresser who identifies as a cat.

quote:

Originally posted by 41:
The AI is plugged into a robot. male or female?

If it is a female robot that looks like the one para posted, then I might come around to the idea.



.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Dr Mehmet Oz reportedly told federal staffers that artificial intelligence models may be better than frontline human physicians in his first all-staff meeting this week.

This is NOT an incorrect statement. However, like many occupations, it is much more likely that AI will be used by the physician to assist in diagnosis, check for drug conflicts, etc. Like it or not, AI will be used in many if not nearly all occupations in some way shape or form.

However, it is a LONG way off before it replaces a human with complex tasks. I find it it ironic that so many think this is an AI or Human thing, it's just evolution of technology that will be absorbed into our society like TV's, VCRs, computers, cell phones, etc. It will be used for good and evil, as much as we permit.

You have to be kidding me. Spell Check screws up half of what I type, and misses actual misspellings. This new 'CoPilot' thing misses critical details and provides useless summaries in meetings. This is the tech that is supposed to replace a Dr with years of experience and medical training?

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
How we'll get the testing for the AI in the future
[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hmUVo0xVAqE?si=v_crlwIUcCYpDYgM" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

That’s not necessarily the future.

We dont have a health care problem in this country.

We do have an insurance problem in this country, fueled in part by greed and ambulance chasing lawyers.

Oz isn’t the solution. His appointment has me puzzled.

As things are now, we have a serious shortage of physicians; a serious shortage of primary care physicians; and a serious shortage of all health care personnel in places outside of major urban areas.

We also have a huge problem of medical education being diluted by DEI shit. And then there's the years of required training to become even a primary care physician, much less several more to achieve specialist status. The expectation is that those non-income-producing years will be compensated by a high salary based on scarcity and "market value".

I can tell you that if the question is applying medical science and known knowledge to the diagnosis of a patient and recommendations for treatment, AI right now is as good as a medical specialist, and better than most primary care physicians.

Some people now can take advantage of that, as it is vastly, enormously more useful than the previous procedure of "Googling" for medical advice, the vast majority of which is irrelevant, or just bullshit.

As far as Telehealth is concerned: as a practicing physician, I hated it, at least for the first visit. For follow-up visits with a stable patient, it's fine. But it's terribly difficult to establish a personal relationship by video much less phone visit.

How is an AI 'doctor' going to do a breast or prostate exam?

That would not be a "doctor" it would be a physician's assistant or nurse-practitioner. When their scope of practice is limited to a portion of a specialty, they can do a fine job. Colonoscopies, cystoscopies, even endoscopies can be done with such ancillary personnel, with s doc watching the "video replay" to be sure nothing was missed.

The biggest problem is probably going to be getting insurance companies and the government to allow medical facilities choose the most efficient way to practice that is consistent with equivalent outcomes in randomized trials.

Medicare Advantage programs, which are paid by capitation, can in theory do that. Kaiser Permanente has done that for decades and their level of quality is demonstrated to be very high.