‘Doctors and nurses need to be replaced by computers and robots’
17th December 2013
Many doctors already follow simple algorithms for most of their work (doing “cookbook” medicine). The AI is already advanced enough that it would outperform them. IBM’s modified Watson is showing a lot of promise: “Wellpoint’s Samuel Nessbaum has claimed that, in tests, Watson’s successful diagnosis rate for lung cancer is 90 percent, compared to 50 percent for human doctors” (1). Already in the 1990, a neural network did better than physicians in diagnosing patients with acute myocardial infarction (2).
Even simple algorithms and basic knowledge base could offer large improvement in care vs human doctors in some cases. To take one example, only 53% of obstetrics and gynecology residents even knew that copper IUDs could be used for emergency contraception (3) and 30% of physicians and Title X clinic providers (such as nurse practitioners) had misconceptions about the safety of IUD for women without kids (4). Doctors often ignore evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. (5). There is no reason to think that a random doctor should be able to sensibly differ on the best way to do things with a team of experts backed by studies.