Telemedicine is fantastic and an amazing advancement in medical treatment. It’s just that people keep trying to use it for things it’s not good at and probably never will be good at.
For reference, here’s what telemedicine is good at:
Refilling prescriptions. “Has anything changed?” “Nope”: You get a refill.
Getting new prescriptions for conditions that don’t really need a new diagnosis (e.g. someone that occasionally has flare-ups of psoriasis or occasional symptoms of other things).
Diagnosing blatantly obvious medical problems. “Doctor, it hurts when I do this!” “Yeah, don’t do that.”
Answering simple questions like, “can I take ibuprofen if I just took a cold medicine that contains acetaminophen?”
Therapy (duh). Do you really need to sit directly across from the therapist for them to talk to you? For some problems, sure. Most? Probably not.
It’s never going to replace a nurse or doctor completely (someone has to listen to you breathe deeply and bonk your knee). However, with advancements in medical testing it may be possible that telemedicine could diagnose and treat more conditions in the future.
Using an Nvidia Nurse™ to do something like answering questions about medications seems fine. Such things have direct, factual answers and often simple instructions. An AI nurse could even be able to check the patient’s entire medical history (which could be lengthy) in milliseconds in order to determine if a particular medication or course or action might not be best for a particular patient.
There’s lots of room for improvement and efficiency gains in medicine. AI could be the prescription we need.
Yes, I was a bit too extreme with my answer above, however, you’ll be hard pressed to find people who don’t already know, to formulate such a good question as:
can I take ibuprofen if I just took a cold medicine that contains acetaminophen?"
Refilling meds, absolutely… As long as the AI has access and can accurately interpret your medical history
This subject is super nuanced but the gist of the matter is that, at the moment, AI has been super hyped and it’s only in the best interest of the people pumping this hype to keep the bubble growing. As such, Nvidia selling us the opportunities in AI, is like wolves telling us how Delicious, and morally sound it is to eat sheep 3 times daily
Oh and I don’t know what kind of “therapy” you were referring to… But any psy therapy simple cannot be done by AI… You might as well tell people to get a dog or “when you feel down, smile”
As long as the AI has access and can accurately interpret your medical history
This is the crux of the issue imo. Interpreting real peoples’ medical situations is HARD. So the patient has a history of COPD in the chart. Who entered it? Did they have the right testing done to confirm it? Have they been taking their inhalers and prophylactic antibiotics? The patient says yes but their outpatient pharmacy fill history says otherwise (or even the opposite lol) Who do we believe, how do we find out what most likely happened? Also their home bipap machine is missing a part so better find somebody to fix that, or get a new machine.
Everyone wants to believe that medicine is as simple as “patient has x y z symptom, so statistics say they’ve got x y z condition,” when in reality everything is intense shades of grey and difficult to parse, overlapping problems.
It’s never going to replace a nurse or doctor completely (someone has to listen to you breathe deeply and bonk your knee).
is a much bigger deal than it seems. There’s just so many little things that you gain from a physical examination that would be lost through the cracks otherwise. Lots of people get major diagnoses from routine lymph node checks or abdominal palpitations. Or the patient stands up to leave, winces, the doctor goes “You okay?” and the patient suddenly remembers “Oh yeah, my dog knocked me over and my leg has been hurting for three weeks and it pops when I put weight on it”.
We’re physical beings, and taking care of our physical forms requires physical care, not a digital approximation of it. I definitely agree telemedicine has a place especially in the spots you identified, but they can’t replace a yearly physical exam without degradation of care.
Telemedicine is fantastic and an amazing advancement in medical treatment. It’s just that people keep trying to use it for things it’s not good at and probably never will be good at.
For reference, here’s what telemedicine is good at:
It’s never going to replace a nurse or doctor completely (someone has to listen to you breathe deeply and bonk your knee). However, with advancements in medical testing it may be possible that telemedicine could diagnose and treat more conditions in the future.
Using an Nvidia Nurse™ to do something like answering questions about medications seems fine. Such things have direct, factual answers and often simple instructions. An AI nurse could even be able to check the patient’s entire medical history (which could be lengthy) in milliseconds in order to determine if a particular medication or course or action might not be best for a particular patient.
There’s lots of room for improvement and efficiency gains in medicine. AI could be the prescription we need.
Yes, I was a bit too extreme with my answer above, however, you’ll be hard pressed to find people who don’t already know, to formulate such a good question as:
Refilling meds, absolutely… As long as the AI has access and can accurately interpret your medical history
This subject is super nuanced but the gist of the matter is that, at the moment, AI has been super hyped and it’s only in the best interest of the people pumping this hype to keep the bubble growing. As such, Nvidia selling us the opportunities in AI, is like wolves telling us how Delicious, and morally sound it is to eat sheep 3 times daily
Oh and I don’t know what kind of “therapy” you were referring to… But any psy therapy simple cannot be done by AI… You might as well tell people to get a dog or “when you feel down, smile”
This is the crux of the issue imo. Interpreting real peoples’ medical situations is HARD. So the patient has a history of COPD in the chart. Who entered it? Did they have the right testing done to confirm it? Have they been taking their inhalers and prophylactic antibiotics? The patient says yes but their outpatient pharmacy fill history says otherwise (or even the opposite lol) Who do we believe, how do we find out what most likely happened? Also their home bipap machine is missing a part so better find somebody to fix that, or get a new machine.
Everyone wants to believe that medicine is as simple as “patient has x y z symptom, so statistics say they’ve got x y z condition,” when in reality everything is intense shades of grey and difficult to parse, overlapping problems.
That’s exactly right… I’ve been working IT in healthcare for over 20 years and seen this over and over
Even IT stuff, which is 1000 times closer to binary compared to the human body, is very hard to troubleshoot when humans are involved
I think the main thing is that
is a much bigger deal than it seems. There’s just so many little things that you gain from a physical examination that would be lost through the cracks otherwise. Lots of people get major diagnoses from routine lymph node checks or abdominal palpitations. Or the patient stands up to leave, winces, the doctor goes “You okay?” and the patient suddenly remembers “Oh yeah, my dog knocked me over and my leg has been hurting for three weeks and it pops when I put weight on it”.
We’re physical beings, and taking care of our physical forms requires physical care, not a digital approximation of it. I definitely agree telemedicine has a place especially in the spots you identified, but they can’t replace a yearly physical exam without degradation of care.