cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1480838/why-did-no-one-ever-think-about-automating-diagnosis-in-healthcare-instead-of-being-depe

In a lot of health problems, the first steps involve listing symptoms and matching it as needed with blood tests, x-ray and other tests to finally lead to diagnosis and treatment. most if not all of the process could be automated to save time and get the best treatment.

To be clear: The automation I am talking about could be just an online symptoms form that give you the tests you need to have before deciding what to do.

In practice: This could be for example a person suffering from low vitamin D levels. Instead of visiting a doctor to order a blood test and then return to the doctor to prescribe him vitamin D, all that could be:

Filling online symptoms form(with pre-written symptoms database to select from) ➩ visiting any blood tests lab ➩ getting a vitamin D prescription.

Why didn’t any hospital or healthcare facility apply this?

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    5 days ago

    This idea goes all the way back to ancient Greece, where the Methodic school of medicine argued that illnesses could be treated by selecting treatments automatically based on a checklist of symptoms:

    The Methodic school takes it to be that once a doctor has recognized the disease a patient has for what it is, the treatment that should follow is inherently obvious. It is not a matter of inference or observation, but of an immediate knowledge.

    But the mainstream consensus has always been that each disease can manifest differently in each individual, and physicians need to rely on intuition derived from experience with previous diseases to diagnose each new case. And removing the physician from the loop—even in cases where final prescription would be the same—reduces the physician’s ability to make observations of the patient and the disease that could help inform them if there are future developments.

    • acapolypse@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      1 day ago

      But the physician, or t least the GP, seems to more of a gatekeeper. I think many of us experienced the whole “take an Advil and see if it gets better”. I’m not sure if I’d necessarily trust the intuition of a person.

      Not to say there’s prolly not a few holes in “filling in a questionnaire” but I get the point where OP is coming from. Healthcare is clogged and some smart thing to automate or make some parts of the process easier might free up time for physicians to look after others, maybe