[ludston]

Given that every positive case needs to be verified by a doctor anyway because the patient has breast cancer, and every negative case has to be checked because it does a worse job than traditional methods... It only costs more.

[thereisnospork]

Depends on the false positive rate. Hypothetically one can 'just' tune the model so false positives are low. This will increase false negatives but those are 'free' as they don't require follow ups. So long as the decrease in cost per real positive[0] goes down there's a benefit to be had.

[0] accounting for false positives, screening costs for true negatives, etc. etc.

[friendzis]

> This will increase false negatives but those are 'free' as they don't require follow ups.

Increase in false negative rate significantly reduces survival rate and increases cost of treatment. We have huge multiplication factor here so decreasing false negative rate is the net positive option at relatively low rates.