cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1480838/why-did-no-one-ever-think-about-automating-diagnosis-in-healthcare-instead-of-being-depe
In a lot of health problems, the first steps involve listing symptoms and matching it as needed with blood tests, x-ray and other tests to finally lead to diagnosis and treatment. most if not all of the process could be automated to save time and get the best treatment.
To be clear: The automation I am talking about could be just an online symptoms form that give you the tests you need to have before deciding what to do.
In practice: This could be for example a person suffering from low vitamin D levels. Instead of visiting a doctor to order a blood test and then return to the doctor to prescribe him vitamin D, all that could be:
Filling online symptoms form(with pre-written symptoms database to select from) ➩ visiting any blood tests lab ➩ getting a vitamin D prescription.
Why didn’t any hospital or healthcare facility apply this?
I recently self referred to physiotherapy for an issue with my elbow.
It took me 30 minutes to answer the AI chat bots questions so it could “diagnose” me. It kept going around in circles, asked me to point on a map of the body what hurt, except the map didn’t let you select elbow just upper or lower arm, at no point did it actually ask me what’s wrong because an open question and free response would be too complicated to unpick. It keep repeating questions I had already answered but worded differently and eventually referred me for lower arm pain.
When it comes to medical advice, doctors are already bad enough to talk to, replacing them with automation is just going to lead to frustration for patients and an easy out for healthcare services when it misses something or gets a diagnosis wrong.