[amrosado]

I'm an MD-PhD student with the type of background you are interested in developing. Radiation oncology is going to be a dying field in the future, but that is the subject of a different conversation.

I think you want to go into MD-PhD, but I would suggest against it if you are more interested in the technology than what is best for patients. A lot of technologists are having problems conceptualizing this because they don't understand the limitations of current technology and what dealing with patients entails. Instead of trying to be a leader in this type of field you should focus more on potential problems technology can solve much better for patients by improving outcomes and decreasing costs. The biggest problem in medicine right now are the insurance companies and healthcare administration practices which are quite costly and provide little patient benefit.

1.) Technology is only going to have as big of a impact on medicine as doctors and patients allow. If you want to make an impact on healthcare focus on developing technology where you can convince doctors that outcomes and costs are better. If you look at past clinical research done, a lot of technology did not produce the beneficial outcomes perceived by the inventors. Clinicians are skeptical of technology without proper evidence suggesting its usefulness. Your technology will have to navigate this system.

2) MD-PhD gives you a lot of flexibility with doing this type of thing, but I would suggest that you focus more on helping patients than building a business. Likewise, I would suggest trying to become more involved at an academic hospital that could support your intellectual property pursuits, give you access to the patients your technology can help, and help find the resources you need for new developments. Neurosurgeons with engineering backgrounds are probably the most successful in this respect.

You have a long ways to go and the journey is not easy by any means. Good luck. Questions are welcomed.

[piggyback]

Thanks for your input. Regarding insurance companies and healthcare administration, I don't think those are problems to be solved by MDs or even PhDs but rather issues to be solved by already existing tech automation companies in coordination with legal experts. You mentioned radiation oncology is a dying field. Could you elaborate on the future of the various specialties (maybe top/bottom 3) as far as you can tell?

[amrosado]

I think radiation oncology is going to be displaced by emerging disciplines in medicine. I would pay close attention to what is happening in the field of immunotherapy since there are a lot of recent success in difficult cancers, autoimmune diseases, and infections. Recently several specialists have supported immunotherapy's potential in cancer treatment (http://www.nature.com/nature/outlook/cancer-immunotherapy/). Unfortunately, training in radiation oncology will most likely be different than the training required to perform this type of medicine. Likewise, the potential for automation/technology/AI in this particular field is quite limited.

It's important to think about why medicine might be moving away from radiological therapies. They are poorly tolerated by patients and expensive (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/radiation-therapy-...). It's difficult to say what will happen in the next couple of years, but radiology in general is taking a hit since hospitals are trying to limit the use of expensive and unnecessary imaging often at the expense of radiology professionals (http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis...). Choosing a career path in medicine should be more about how you like interacting with patients.

[piggyback]

Can you expand on potential future medical disciplines and what specialties you think are going to be replaced?