My field of research is in machine learning, and upon chatting with medical folks about recent machine learning breakthroughs that outperform panels of experts at making diagnoses, they are all extremely resistant and think that using AI in medicine is somehow immoral.
I'd personally want to be diagnosed by a panel of experts with access to said AI.
Problem is they might override the AI's (more-likely correct) judgment. See the table labeled "Predictive modeling vs. the experts" at the bottom of the article "Predictive Modeling Holds Promise of Earlier Identification, Treatment":
In the end, we'll rely on the AI. We'll _want_ to rely on the AI. Doctor's roles will be reduced to that of nurses. Care will improve. See it all described in the 2006 movie "Idiocracy":
"I'd personally want to be diagnosed by a panel of experts with access to said AI."
Exactly. Neither one nor the other alone, even though today the panel of experts seems the best bet
To see how the AI can go wrong, just try to diagnose something with flu-like symptoms using Google.
There's also an issue with incomplete tests. Oh the AI can improve the diagnostic using exam X but exam X is too expensive/too invasive/risky etc, someone needs to play "middle ground"
Some kind of machine/human integrated medical system is a common goal of current research. Where many AI people think the lack of uptake is coming from, besides just general resistance to AI diagnosis, is that current systems don't have great real-world usability.
A few issues: There is a lot of information available to the doctor in a typical diagnostic setting that is not currently codified in machine-readable form, and asking the doctor to do custom data entry per patient is not likely to improve uptake. Ideally the systems should integrate with other patient-information-management systems, and such patient-information systems might need to be augmented with new or differently coded data collection. Perhaps equally or more importantly, if the AI system is going to be a component of the diagnosis rather than handed over full trust to make the diagnosis, it should ideally produce "white-box" diagnoses with justification for its reasoning and human-readable explanation of what it thinks the situation is, not just black-box predictions.
Is the idea that i have an appointment, and the doctor / AI come to a diagnosis?
Or that an AI runs through a doctor surgery's collection of patient medical records and highlights patients that probably would benefit from an intervention?
Certainly agree for a panel of experts. Thinking about day-to-day use for the masses (which I don't know if they are targeting or not), Watson would certainly outperform most of the doctors I've been examined by in the last few years (and I'd trust it more than the doctors).
I would expect that Watson is used as a discovery, not a decision tool - something to point out the symptoms as matching an uncommon disease that the doctor had not otherwise considered.
There are around 500 000 biology and medical research papers published per year (http://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf), and it's completely impossible for a doctor to keep up with all of the latest knowledge. A search engine can help a lot in discovering otherwise unnoticed connections.
I'm not sure how insurance companies are going to approach this - but "the computer agrees with my decision" seems to be a good defense argument in a malpractice case. And if the end result is statistically better, then insurance companies will adjust their prices.
Kaiser makes use of an expert system when determining whether to schedule an appointment. I once called in with the the symptoms, "Excruciating pain in the chest, left arm just went completely numb at the same time" - and the admitting nurse (under the guidance of an expert system) determined with three quick questions that it wasn't urgent. (Any shortness of breath, are you light headed, if you press your fingernail down, how long does it take to return from white to red)
So, expert systems are already here and helping make decisions...
With that history you should have been seen urgently. There are a number of serious things that are possible with those symptoms.
Plus, the nurse was relying on your accurate reporting of symptoms. Things are often very different face to face than over a telephone. People very often under/overplay their symptoms.
Presumably those people who've developed the kaiser system have come to a different conclusion than you. It may be the case that there is no scenario in which "Excrutiating Chest Pain + Numb Left Arm" is urgent when you have a full return to red on when pressing your fingernail (blood pressure check?)
Also, presumably, if I was having any shortness of breath, it could be determined just by talking to me. They may have also taken my age into account (32) and decided that 32 year olds don't have heart attacks in the way I was describing.
I came in for a checkup a week later, and all was well (except for a RSI issue that was contributing to the completely numb left arm)
Oh yeah this would never be purely AI...think of Watson like the Tardis and the Doctor like ...The Doctor. They go hand in hand, Watson simply makes it so the Doctor doesn't have to waste time.
In 2012, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York began work on an adviser to recommend cancer treatments. Dr. Mark Kris, a Sloan-Kettering oncologist, said an early version of the Watson tool could be used on patients later this year if it passes tests.
At his office, he pulled out an iPad and showed a screen from Watson that listed three potential treatments. Watson was less than 32% confident that any of them were correct. "Just like cancer, it is much more complex than we thought," Dr. Kris said.
Watson may start really outperform humans when his strength - the ability to ingest and process/correlate huge amounts of, probably with not completely understood relevance, information, like full DNA sequence of a patient, etc... - will be fully utilized, and some previously unknown to humans patterns start to emerge.
Is there even a product to sell to medical? I thought Watson was just a proof-of-concept system. An actual product based on Watson would need to have some defined scope (i.e. only used for cancer treatments), would need some sort of FDA clearance which would probably require clinical trials. Is it there yet? Does IBM even want to take on the liability and expense of bringing it to medical? And is the market even big enough to interest IBM? Today, the "decision-support system" market is tiny.
Slow to adapt comes from many factors. We've been studying the history of medical innovation. The biggest hurdle is the training time required. We're talking a decade to get credentials. Then another decade to get experience. Those 20 years are hard work (schooling, residency, long hours, loans, meager pay). By the time they're ready to contribute, risks are not a good thing esp adding to the chance of doing harm to patients. So the status quo persists until the next generation comes along.
We're meeting mental health professionals who were trained in the 60s, 70s, and 80s who proudly claim they know little about the brain. I don't blame them entirely - when they were trained we only knew about the human brain from stokes and open head trauma. To get them up to speed requires a whole new training. That's very hard when you spend all week seeing patients - that's your livelihood.
For specialized tasks expert systems have been better than doctors since the 1970s (Mycin, infection/antibiotic assignment). So I would guess there is some resistance.
I'd personally want to be diagnosed by a panel of experts with access to said AI.