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by a3_nm 3590 days ago
> So who doesn't want that, right?

What about privacy? Doctors in my country (France) are legally obliged to respect the privacy of their patients and the confidentiality of medical data. A third-party cloud service, not so much.

Edit: To be more precise, I'm not saying that medical apps can't be done right. I'm just disagreeing with the implication that an efficient medical app is automatically a good thing.
3 comments
teej 3590 days ago
Erm, in the United States we have HIPAA which directly makes "a third-party cloud service" "legally obliged to respect the privacy of their patients and the confidentiality of medical data". Besides, using AI doesn't have to mean using centralized cloud architecture.
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welanes 3590 days ago
Similar apps have been around a while - http://www.wired.com/2015/09/social-network-doctors-swap-gro...

> And finally, if you’re worried about your own gnarly ER visit showing up on Figure 1, the app is very careful about patient privacy. Every time anyone uploads an image, the first thing they do is fill out a consent form. Figure 1 has an algorithm that automatically obscures faces, and tools that let the user erase any pixels containing names, dates, or any other identifying details.

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devy 3590 days ago
Mark Zuckerberg didn't say this app was brand new - he just mentioned that he became aware of it recently.

SkinVision has been around for 5 years. "It was founded in 2011 in Bucharest, Romania based on a PhD study to apply the mathematical theory ‘fractal geometry’ for medical imaging. Fractal geometry simulates natural growth of tissue and is widely used and documented in biology." [1]

[1]: https://skinvision.com/team

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teej 3590 days ago
Figure 1 isn't really the same thing. It's not a diagnostic tool, it doesn't store PHI, and a human reviews every image before it's visible in the app. Figure 1 is closer to Instagram than it is to the Watson stuff which is all HIPAA compliant.
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xorblurb 3590 days ago
A consent form for consenting to what?
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prawn 3590 days ago
I'm sure the same privacy conditions exist here in Australia too. However, when getting my skin checked, I asked the doctor about what she was looking for, out of curiosity. To explain, she pulled up vision of a problematic mole on someone else's file, and their name/details were visible.
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