Computers Shown To Be Better Than Docs At Diagnosing, Prescribing Treatment

... is that the computer doesn't have, literally, hands-on experience.

For example... you have stomach pain. Okay. Where? Does this hurt? Does it hurt if I poke this? Do you have a fever? How high? ("Oh, I don't know, maybe XX"...)...

In other words, you still need someone who *knows* what to do to help diagnose simply to *get* the information. You need someone trained to know where to poke, where to tap, where to see if something hurts. And then, of course, to try to wheedle the real information out rather than the confusing answers patients (note that I am not a doctor, I am a patient) give.:)

As a diagnostic tool, I think it would be a huge benefit. An individual simply can't keep up to date on everything, don't know everything, and can't research everything. Having a diagnostic tool that *does* do all that would be a huge benefit. There would be options and diagnoses that perhaps the doctor had not thought about. Additionally, the diagnostic tool - I hope! - would not just say "Oh, it's this" but would perhaps say "Well, it could be this, and you need to find out this information first... or it could be this, and for that you need to do these tests..."

The idea that a patient, combined with a non-trained non-doctor, can somehow come up with all the right answers/information and a machine can simply diagnose it on the spot seems like a very simplistic view. Perhaps that works with colds, the flu, or warts... but for more complex things... it seems diagnoses tend to work on a "it could be this; let's do more specific tests to find out if it is" type of investigation.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/bReWgwo8suU/story01.htm

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