[jesseryoung]

I've worked in healthcare IT for my entire professional career - It's A LOT more complicated than most people think. For the last 5 years I've focused on the data side of healthcare and I think that deep learning is 100% possible - it's just not achievable by a single person and it's likely VERY expensive. There are so many facets to healthcare data that's it's just impossible for a single individual to achieve something meaningful by themselves without the help of teams of doctors, data analysts, data engineers and data scientists. Just dealing with data quality issues (such as the ones called out in this essay) require a team of people to determine if metrics you are trying to measure are legit or not.

On billing: I'm convinced that the primary reason why healthcare (at least in the US) is so complex - is because of the dichotomy of saving people at all costs, while doing so fiscally responsibly. It is fairly common for large healthcare organizations to have ACTING doctors in their c-suite, who's primary goal is not to make money - it's to save lives. The people who care about saving money, reducing cost and increasing efficiency have no control over the organization. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but IMO it's the largest contributing factor as to why healthcare billing is so complex, and healthcare costs get as high as they do (at least in the US).