[bobbiechen]

"We'd better hope we can actually replace radiologists with AI, because medical students are no longer choosing to specialize in it."

- one of the speakers at a recent health+AI event

I'm wondering what others in healthcare think of this. I've been skeptical about the death of software engineering as a profession (just as spreadsheets increased the number of accountants), but neither of those jobs requires going to medical school for several years.

[doctoring]

I don't know for other countries, but for the United States, "medical students are no longer choosing it" is very very untrue, and it is trivial to look up as this information is public from the NRMP (the organization that runs the residency match).

Radiology remains one of the most competitive and in-demand specialties. In this year's match, only 4 out of ~1200 available radiology residency positions went unfilled. Last year was 0. Only a handful of other specialties have similar rates.

As comparison, 251 out of ~900 pediatric residency slots went unfilled this year. And 636 out of ~5000 family medicine residency slots went unfilled. (These are much higher than previous years.)

However, I do somewhat agree with the speaker's sentiment if for a different reason. Radiologist supply in the US is roughly stable (thanks to the US's strange stranglehold on residency slots), but demand is increasing: the number of scans ordered on a per patient continues to rise, as does the complexity of those scans. I've heard of hospital systems with backlogs that result in patients waiting months for, say, their cancer staging scan. One can hope we find some way to make things more efficient. Maybe AI can help.

[bobbiechen]

Thanks for the info (and same for the sibling comments)! Seems that the hype does not match the reality again.

[yurimo]

Interesting take. Had a friend recently start medschool (in US) and he said radiology was some of the top directions people were considerings, because as he put it "the pay is decent and they have a life". Anecdotal but I wonder what is the reason of not specializing in it then. If anything AI can help reduce the workload further and identify patterns that can be missed.

[husarcik]

I'm a third year radiology resident. That speaker is misinformed as diagnostic radiology has become one of the most competitive subspecialties to get into. All spots fill every year. We need more radiology spots to keep up with the demand.