Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bluGill 2621 days ago
A lot of farmers have a surprising amount of medical knowledge. It is common for farmers to do a lot of simple medical procedures on their animals. Large farmers in the US already have ultrasound machines for their cows - they don't need to know everything about how to read them to know signs that mean call in help (thus saving a lot of money)
1 comments
close04 2621 days ago
Knowledge of animal anatomy or certain medical procedures are no help in trying to decipher an ultrasound image. I don't think you can just plop an ultrasound scanner into a farmer's hands and have them to do anything truly useful with it, to justify the investment. Not without training.

One option would probably be to have a doctor remotely in a "command center" just looking at these as they are uploaded from the field, and relaying the diagnosis back to the farmer.

link
bluGill 2621 days ago
How much training do you need though: A one day class can cover "this is is normal, this is where you need help". Of course these are animals: farmers are willing to make economic decisions here. The risk/cost of a rare disease going undetected vs time to learn how to accurately diagnose it (or pay someone who has the training) is something that can be talked about.
link
close04 2621 days ago
> A one day class can cover

...probably not much more than a 1 day C++ course would offer a random person. :)

That's nowhere near what a farmer needs to read much into an ultrasound. It takes a medical student years of learning (medicine) topped by a lot of practice and experience in imaging until they are useful in actually reading an image. And even a 1-2 day course costs thousands of dollars.

It would be a massive expense for very little real life benefit. I'm guessing AI and a remote doctor would do better. I kept reading a lot of good news recently about AI helping with diagnostics in medical imaging so I guess we can't be too far.

link
tonyarkles 2621 days ago
Over the weekend I had a veterinarian tell me that he wasn’t capable of properly interpreting an ultrasound! He did an x-ray and saw something concerning, but being Easter weekend there were no ultrasound techs in the office. I had to take my cat to a different clinic, where a pro successfully figured out what was going on.

I agree fully that a 1-day course isn’t going to be enough here. Radiologists go to school for a while to get good at both the imaging part and the interpretation part.

link