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Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

For several years now I've wondered why we don't have "Health Closets" (terrible name, I'm sorry) in our homes.

An HC would be a small room dedicated to measuring all the things that can serve as indicators of health. I'd love to have a room I could step into that would take high res photos of my skin to send to my dermatologist, analyze various samples of fluids, maybe take retinal photographs, etc.

With the advent of ML driven diagnosis in medicine there is the potential that if we collect a huge amount of data it can be processed automatically. In addition data could be aggregated for population wide analysis.

While this could be correlated with my full genetic profile, I'm much more interested in how regular measurement with lots of low cost sensors could impact healthcare.

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Because over-testing leads to over-diagnosis, which leads to over-treatment, which doesn't lead to longer or better life and often leads to reduced quality of life.

I find this argument hilarious because it is literally admitting widespread iatrogenic harm, and the solution is not to do less harm, but to keep information away from the patient. How else would like to prove that the AMA is a regressive guild with state protection and financial support through the insurance industry? The only reason many doctors don’t like diagnostics is that it undermines their witchcraft, similar to how second-rate mechanics hate consumer OBD-2 port readers, while first-rate mechanics love them. The argument for less diagnostics is laughable. Diagnostics do not cause harm. The harm is being caused by doctors.

Because there aren’t any systematic perverse incentives baked into US healthcare or anything.

Like, say, many if not most preventive measures being unreimbursible while treatment (especially Stone Age chemo protocols) are reimbursed at profitable rates.

Nope, it’s those fucking physicians greedily trying to gut medicine. Like so:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/health/private-equity-der...

Oh, whoops, my bad, it’s the usual malevolent actors and their stooges.

Yes there are shitty doctors (I’ve worked with plenty). However, I would propose that the majority of the rot in the US system is structural. Socialized or properly regulated private systems do not have these scale of problems.

Last but not least, I’m guessing you haven’t added up the cost of running a Snyderome per person. It’s not sustainable on a large scale at current prices. That is why cruder methods of risk stratification that cost less are the norm.

Larry Niven's known space series predicated this 50+ years ago. You'd get up every morning, put your sleeve in for a diagnosis first thing, it would treat you, tell you if there was a problem.

Data collections is only a fraction of what makes good medicine.

if it's a fraction, say 1/5, then what fraction would data collection + data presentation be?

1.1/5

Medicine is mostly about applying the right algorithm to an ill defined problem. The day you can read a problem text and have code autogenerated to select the right algorithm to solve it is the day you can start automating the valuable parts of medicine.

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