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Comment by charlie0 | Hacker News Reader

You do have to wonder though, if traditional automation could do the job, why wasn't that done already?

I think the real question is why is this being reported on. There are always medical advancements, but because this one gets chosen as a news story because "AI" in the headline gets clicks.

This isn't just a small advancement, though. It's a simple tool, which isn't restricted to medical specialists, with a huge impact.

If a study found that letting cats roam hospital hallways reduced unexpected deaths by 26%, I think that would be reported, too.

It's a 26% decrease in relative terms, but looking at the study shows that it is a 0.5% decrease in absolute terms (1.6% vs 2.1%). A 0.5% decrease is great and should be applauded, but I think the article framing of this being a breakthrough is misleading and even goes against the conclusions of the very paper it is reporting on.

Dang, the journos fooled me again with their creative headlines. You're right, this is basically a nothing-burger to generate clicks.

Because healthcare (and banking and ....) are horribly behind on tech. We have life saving devices in hospitals still running Windows 95 as an OS. Also, the main problem in healthcare is misaligned incentives. As said elsewhere in this thread, this kind of tech will get when it enables cost reductions larger than its costs.

Because tech people don't understand how healthcare systems work, and reciprocally healthcare workers have neither the education nor the time to understand new tech. The result is what you get today: people from both sides shouting at deaf ears on the internet. Also, the usual corporate culture issues.

Hot take: If tech people who are used to working with complex systems can't understand it, maybe it's time to replace the whole thing. The healthcare system doesn't make sense at all and is that way because of regulation and a bunch of other crap we need to get rid of/refactor.

One thing tech people absolutely don't understand is how much 2024 medicine is know-how and not science. And that's not for lack of trying to make it science. There are certainly things that could be improved, even through trivial stats. But for the most part, our information retrieval capabilities are so bad that the ability to actually walk the corridors and see the patient IRL is currently not something current state-of-the-art AI can compensate for.

I wasn't referring to marginal gains through the use of AI or automation, I'm referring to re-building everything from scratch so that things are actually efficient and effective. ie, see what Tesla did to the car industry and SpaceX to the space industry. We need something like that for health.

This was traditional automation. They used a bog standard statistical techniques and called it AI for fundraising purposes.

The paper itself doesn't claim it's AI. They do say it's "machine learning".

https://www.cmaj.ca/content/196/30/E1027

because its not useful ?

"A difference-in-differences comparison between GIM and subspecialty units demonstrated no statistically significant difference in outcomes"

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