On 27/02/17 18:27, L A Walsh wrote:
It's likely it won't be too many more years before 1st course of action in diagnosing a patient will be to run a computer workup of their symptoms. NOT doing so as a 1st line of action would be considered malpractice.
Right now, medicine just isn't advanced enough to have a computer do it.
Then why do I remember - FROM THE 1980S - computer programs that were better than doctors at diagnosing illnesses? The critical factor in being able to diagnose, is having the experience. And the majority of GPs don't have the experience. (Not their fault, it comes with age.) A simple program, written to run on an S100 system with 64K of ram, could probably do better than most doctors today. All it needs is a simple diagnostic database. I can't remember the AI language it was written in. You are falling into the trap of assuming we are much better than our predecessors - I studied some medical history, and it's striking how good the doctors of centuries past were at diagnosing illnesses - they were most definitely the equal of todays. Where we are much better than they are is that we have many more cures available to us, but even then, the biggest advance in health care for centuries has been clean water! Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org