robodoctor

what will the artificial intelligence / robo doctor of the future be like? and how far off is this?

already people use google and web md to diagnose, treat and repair theyself

in a sense I think allot of what doctors are anyway is a repository of facts and reccomended treatments so why not - except surgeons , hard to have a machine do that yet

To some degree I am probably being a little reactionary and "there's no way a robot could ever do MY job" in the same way that others have in the past, before the robots took their jobs, but...

Medicine is really, really complex. Some parts of it fit well into algorithms you can set up and follow, and to some degree that stuff could be better served by automation, to prevent accidental fuckups of human error. Some parts of it won't really ever lend themselves to algorithms, because there's a lot of uncertainty built into it. Some diseases present vaguely, some people present with a common disease in an unusual way, and often enough, there's not really a single best answer (or even sometimes all that good of an answer). I could read all of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and still be totally lost when I come across an unusual presentation of a disease, or a thing that like seven people in the history of medical literature have ever had before.

PS WebMD suxxxxx, but I will call for a consult with Dr Google with some regularity. Dr Google knows so much about some stuff! (And nothing about a lot of other stuff)

you underestimate the potential for artificial intelligence!

Yes I do! It is really easy to say "Machines can do all kinds of wondrous things" and substantially more difficult to have them do those more wondrous things. There is a lot of really awesome stuff you can do now because of electronic records and the internet, and there is a lot of stuff where the transition to digital assistance has been less effective. If a medical record system that is intuitive can be developed, then I will be moderately more impressed with how much better technology has made my (future) career; for now, it's an adjunct with pluses and minuses like anything else.

Also, we fancy ourselves as caring humanists and all that jazz. A Robot is gonna be less effective than a good doctor at telling someone they're going to die, or dealing with a case of spousal abuse, because at that point all we're doing is basic human interaction while wearing a white coat. (A robot will be at least as good, and possibly be better than a bad doctor at doing these things, but hey, some doctors are a-holes.) I am old and set in my ways and would prefer it if a real person who seems nice is telling me that my hypothetical child came out stillborn, or that my pancreatic cancer is already metastatic and there's nothing they can do.

http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content09/21b-medical-droid.jpg

"you are going to die"

"insert coin for your diagnosis"

well be that as it may in the end technology always wins and people will be treated by robodoctors!

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/9213/11012563.jpg

eggs-actly! robots make eggs too!