When does it become 'biological enhancement'? Maybe all doctors should have a bluetooth implanted, to connect them to an AI or online consultants at all times?
I would give so much to see doctors who simply "google" things.
As someone who works as dev improving data and efficiency in a business.....i hate people who don't just google things. I implemented something a year ago, maybe its time to refresh my knowledge and see if anything has changed? Some doctors are infuriating, using knowledge they gained 10 years ago. Medicine also changes fairly quickly and quick search could really be a great tool.
Imagine this, I have seen many physicians (40+) at top hospitals about "mysterious" symptoms due to a reaction to a medication. 3 agreed its possible. The symptoms are listed on the medication label, plus I have been tested for everything else under the sun. I have sent research to my primary physician who has said, I am the first patient to change his mind about a drug. A quick search just listing my vague symptoms would bring up a possible reaction, or just looking at the damn label.
If been in a clinic where after describing my symptoms the doctor opened the computer and typed them into a search engine. I asked her if she was googling it and she said "sort of". She started telling me about a search tool doctor's use which is much more professionally focused than Google (who diagnoses everyone with cancer) and I was very impressed both with her honesty and that this existed.
It's been a few years since so I don't remember if it was a windows app or a website but it did have a very 90s looking interface.
I had exactly this happen once in a regular MD’s office, but he was reading to me from literally the Wikipedia article on carpal tunnel, on a Chromebook. Actually Wikipedia.
I've had similar experiences like that; the doctor pulling up articles from common websites. But it wasn't the doctor pulling up the article because they didn't know what was in the article, it was them showing me so I can look it up later and read more if I wanted.
Wikipedia seems like a poor choice, though. Maybe carpel tunnel is basic enough for Wikipedia to be fine. I've been shown stuff like Mayo Clinic articles.
I caught a gastrointestinal parasite in one journey to Brazil (I should have avoided the street food!) and I am 90% sure that my Spanish doctor just googled what the hell I had when she got the results of the analysis, right there in front of me. I am not 100% sure because I could not see her screen, but the (in)frequency of mouse clicks was consistent with someone going over google and reading a bunch of pages. And then suddenly she started typing a lot and didn't use the mouse at all - switched to her daily medical app, I presumed.
The antibiotics she gave me did the trick. She was young, though.
I deal with daily chronic pain which has rendered me essentially unable to work. My full-time job has been “patient” for almost three years.
What I’ve learned is that you have to do their work for them if you want to make progress.
Sometimes that means showing up with highlighted printouts of studies that they would never get around to reading if you didn’t deliver them — and follow up on them — personally.
Other times that means that means playing dumb and “presenting” (not faking, just highlighting) the right preliminary symptoms to get a key test ordered.
I’m lucky in that I have education. I can read a study. I understand probability and statistics. I can learn terminology and use it (somewhat) correctly in a sentence. I often wonder how people without a STEM background get any care at all. Perhaps they don’t?
It’s a horrible, broken system that amounts to little more than insurance-mandated gatekeeping.
My wife is a nurse who pivoted into pharma, and when our daughter was diagnosed with a heart tumor, the only thing that ultimately resulted in us finding the right case was my wife's experience and ability to 1) ask the right questions, and 2) conduct her own scientific literature search & meta analyses. I kept thinking throughout that, if we weren't able to do this, our daughter would probably die ... and how many millions of patients receive subpar care because they don't have the skills or knowledge to keep care providers (and insurers) honest.
I mean, it's not like they are going to ask wikihow.
Updated versions of their books and medical journals, or even a stackoverflow-like platform where they could discuss and read answers would be magnitudes better.
Maybe humans memorizing tons of information was the best approach for medicine a century ago, but it's not the case anymore
Someone with an extensive education should be able to decide which information can be considered good. If not, then maybe we should stop testing memorization and focus on ability to solve problems using ALL tools available.
> "Someone with an extensive education should be able to decide which information can be considered good."
Uh, what is an education other than absorption and integration of information? If they haven't learned (i.e. memorized) a large quantity of information as part of their extensive education to guide them, they have zero chance of "being able to decide which information can be considered good" by definition.
There are medical databases specifically for things like this (not available to the general public), but doctors often don’t reference them because of false confidence or time pressure.
Presumably, doctors would have access to better information than the layperson, and know how to sift through it. I know the person you replied to said "Google", but that's been a fairly overloaded term for decades now.
Personally, I would like to see a doctor searching a site made for doctors. Seeing one just do an actual generic online search would not give me much confidence.
One eye opening fact I learned when my family was dealing with a complex medical diagnosis was how specialists have seemingly the entire population of peers on speed dial. If you can help them connect dots to other specialists, they likely have the ability to get in touch with them in near real time. I mean, it may not be 100% reliable, but my new MO is to assume all physicians have a batphone, and to ask them to use it if they need additional opinions & insights.
Which is why having an expert sift through it is helpful - he can immediately rule out garbage from stuff that at least looks sane and might warrant further consideration.
As engineers we do it all the time (sometimes subconsciously) when searching for technical documentation. Having that skill in other fields would be a godsend, but the next best thing would be to have someone else do it on our behalf.
I used to work in this industry. Medicine is the most broken, indoctrinated, risk-averse, technology-averse industry of them all. These are people who still use fax machines. Ask your doctor for some basic imaging or so much as a print out of your chart and they'll deny your problem, then give you confused dirty looks and talk down to you.
Compare that with Dentistry. I had a problem and walked in with an hour's notice, had a x-ray from a handheld scanner emailed to me with the problem highlighted within 5 minutes like something out of Star Trek.
I agree, for some reason dentistry and orthodontics seem far more technologically advanced than the rest of medicine. In addition to handheld x-rays like you mentioned, I’ve seen dentists/orthodontists use 3D printers, 3D scanners (e.x. iTero Element) and modern composites. Small sample size, but all the orthodontists and dentists’ offices I’ve been in are clearly embracing new technology as much as they can, while every doctor’s office I’ve been in has seemed like it could be a hundred years old. I wonder why that is.
The cynic in me suspects it's because insurance companies and employer-provided insurance hasn't completely mucked up the market the way it has with healthcare. Sometimes I wonder if America's "best" (least resistant) path to single-payer healthcare is to start smaller scale with universal coverage for vision & dentistry and then slowly expand coverage from there.
That’s not exactly the industries fault though. For example, in the US, you have to get a mammogram BY LAW. It doesn’t even matter that there are better and more reliable methods to detect breast cancer, the law said it MUST be a mammogram. https://www.factcheck.org/2013/10/aca-doesnt-restrict-mammog....
Anyway, then you have companies like Theranos who come along and prove why it’s a good idea to be risk adverse. Snake oil has been sold for a long time, and it really isn’t until “recently” that it has been illegal to sell it (since a bit after 1906, in the US).
In Australia all imaging is stored on the cloud somewhere. For a reason unknown to me, you still get the huge envelope. But inside is just a piece of paper with some public id and a QRcode. You don’t really need these. The doctor who ordered the imaging will automatically get forwarded the results. If you are refereed to a specialist, they will get it to.
It's bad enough when hospitals get hacked.
I can't imagine the problems that happen when the medical staff's 'biological enhancements' are hacked.
In this community we sometimes talk about how some technical interviews are deeply unrealistic because they remove the candidate from, e.g. their IDE with tab autocompletion, or googling, which you might normally depend on. Your skills are best measured when you have access to the tools and environment which you'd actually use while working. And yet ... sometimes you can pair program with someone and it's clear that they don't really understand what they're accepting from the autocomplete, and this is legitimate cause for concern.
I think I want doctors to definitely know a bunch of stuff unaided, even if they would normally always have access to supplementary references. If nothing else, they should have the habits of mind to be able to critically evaluate their references, and notice when they're wrong or suspect.
The first episode of Stargate I ever watched sorta touched on this... It's the season 7, episode 5 called "Revisions" with Christopher Heyerdahl. Definitely recommend. It got me hooked on the franchise forever
The whole series is amazing. I strongly recommend watching SG1 S1-S7, then stargate atlantis S1 in parallel with SG1 S8. Some of the best television ever made.
"One shouldn't do [that medical procedure], as GOD made you perfect and you shouldn't mess with God's! plan!!!"
> Thats an interesting comment, may I ask - was God's plan to manufacture those glasses such that you can see clearly and read such from that book, made by man?
A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.
Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”
The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.”
So the rowboat went on.
Then a motorboat came by. “The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.”
To this the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”
So the motorboat went on.
Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.”
To this the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”
So the helicopter reluctantly flew away.
Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!”
To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?”
I know a few doctors who have told me they've used this one on people who refuse care for religious reasons. Unfortunately they said it rarely works.
