[skilled]

I think doctors are going to lose their minds or at the very least get extremely agitated/frustrated as patients increasingly use AI tools to do self-research for symptoms and diagnosis. And I know this because I am guilty of this myself and recently had a dentist tell me to not do that. And this applies to so many health workers, your GP as well as your physical therapist, etc.

Recently I had Claude analyze an MRI of my knee and it gave me five different potential problems, but once I got the radiologist report - none of those problems were present, it did not detect that it was chondromalacia that I found out from the radiologist report.

Health and the current iteration of LLM's just doesn't seem like a great match.

[matheusmoreira]

I like it when patients research things. Consult is more engaging for me when people care about and try to understand stuff.

It's hard for patients to interpret medical research and evidence though... ChatGPT recommended treatment for some of my family members based on studies with 60 patients. It wasn't exactly established medical practice.

[jchw]

I was poking around with some symptoms into Gemini not too seriously. It suggested a diagnosis which I have since forgotten. I looked it up and it seems like something with less than 100 known cases in human history.

I think someone needs to teach these models the old "horses not zebras" adage, or we're gonna have a lot of people insisting on having rare cancers.

[ryandrake]

There is a fine line between being a well-informed and engaged patient and the whole “dO yOuR oWn ReSeArCh” madness. A lot of people don’t know where that line is and when they’ve crossed over it.

[energy123]

Radiology is probably an edge case, due to needing the right inductive bias and training data that general purpose multimodal language models may lack. At least until someone creates RadiologyBench and provides an incentive to the labs to make that part of their data pipeline.

I have witnessed a non-radiology case (a STD on the face) where the LLM got it right and the doctor didn't (he said it was diabetes related). It may have saved that person's life by causing them to go to a different doctor with the LLM's diagnosis and getting the proper treatment.

What I don't understand is why don't doctors use LLMs as a tool for a quick second opinion before arriving at a determination? They have my data. They can put it into GPT 5.6 Pro or Fable, read the output, and choose to disregard it if they really want to, but if there's a 20% chance that it spots something they missed, why not?

[copperx]

Yes. The issue is the the average user doesn't understand that the vision capabilities of LLMs are limited.

It's a world of difference to upload the radiologist/pathologist report and go from there than uploading the raw images.

The first is a great idea, the second reckless and dangerous.

[skilled]

I have read that there is private software for radiologists that has better training data, but I can’t comment on it myself.

Maybe someone who has used it can give some feedback.

[chasd00]

One of the worst things a new mother can do is use google, instant panic attacks. I imagine using an LLM would do the same.

When my first kiddo was an infant any google result for information related to even a sneeze said it was an indication of some super tragic situation. Any advice about a behavior or trait ended with basically "your child is destined to be a serial killer".

For any new parents out there, just call your doctor. Stay far away from the internet and AI when it comes to your baby's health.

[BadBadJellyBean]

I know of someone who had a red bump on their arm and asked ChatGPT if that was a problem and if they should see a doctor. It said no so they left it. Turns out it was a tick and they now have lyme disease.

[matwood]

I feel like I'm reading comments on LLMs writing code where they romanticize that programmers were perfect before LLMs.

Doctors are not infallible. I know plenty of them and they absolutely tell me who and who not to go to. The old joke, what do you call the person who graduated last in their class at med school? Doctor.

Lyme disease in particular has all sorts of issues with diagnosis - from real doctors!

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10778834/

[BadBadJellyBean]

Possibly but a big red bump might have caused another reaction from a real doctor.

[afavour]

I have a friend who uploaded a photo of a mark on their back to Claude, which stated it was a cut that was healing. Went to the doctor, it was skin cancer.

That said, Claude did say “I’m not a doctor, if in doubt make sure you see one”. So, that’s good… but then, what’s the point in using it?

[julienchastang]

I don’t have the reference on my fingertips, but patients who are involved in their own healthcare have better outcomes. Moreover, for those of us (and there are many of us) who have gotten increasingly frustrated with US healthcare (e.g., long waits, short visits where you never really get a chance to discuss the health issue, difficulty getting appropriate tests), AI is looking like an increasingly attractive option. Not as a replacement for physicians, but at least as a path forward to possibly better understand what is going on.

[rchaud]

"Involved in their own healthcare" tends to mean getting second opinions, reading medical articles, joining a support group and talking to other patients.

Pretty soon it will mean "I looked it up on ChatGPT and it says I don't need surgery".

[AyanamiKaine]

Its already happening, I am not a doctor but work with them closely. One patient used ChatGPT for his problems because he waited so long for an appointment. He was a bit neurotic and talked the whole time how one doesnt need a doctor anymore as ChatGPT is already good enough.

The real main problem is that you need to wait to get help, may it be a therapist or an eye doctor. But ChatGPT is instant.

This part worries me the most.

[f6v]

It's not a problem on it's on, it's a symptom of a systemic issue. Access to healthcare can be very limited even in developed countries. Like, you need to sometimes wait half a year to get a specialist appointment in Europe (unless you can afford private healthcare). In this case, people will be using AI to get faster answers.

[jeffybefffy519]

Theres a good use case in AI for patients to chat to tho, if i could transfer all of the context of a conversation I had with a AI bot to my Dr before a appointment it would most likely improve outcomes because I have been much more verbose and descriptive to the AI bot. You basically want an AI chat bot for patient history...

[powerpcmac]

45% of medical note taking software hallucinated details about patients. This is not a good application for AI.

https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/specialreports/specialr...

[jeffybefffy519]

I dont want it to take notes tho, i have already talked to it. It just needs to ask questions back so a dr can read the convo.

[cloakandswagger]

It's way better than the Google MD problem that previously existed.

I had Claude analyze a blood panel and provide potential diagnoses, medications, dosing and contraindications for a fairly esoteric condition. It gave me the questions to ask a doctor (being completely forthright that I'm yet another layman regurgitating AI output) who agreed with the approach and even admitted that he hadn't seen a case study it referenced but that he wish he knew about sooner.

Will doctors still be assmad that years of their study is now democratized? Probably. I am (or was) a software engineer, welcome to the club.