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Comment by unwoundmouse | Hacker News Reader

This is ridiculous, if such a device exists and can detect a new condition that 5% of the US population has with a 80% false positive rate, and the condition was as serious as heart disease this would really be a miracle device and people would be grateful that such a thing exists.

I really have distaste for those comments that attempt to mask ideology with a veneer of logic. You attempt to use a limiting case argument that actually proves the original comment's argument and then end with rhetoric about how the healthcare system is being flooded already. That may be true, but that isn't relevant to the utility of the apple watch in this scenario.

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> This is ridiculous, if such a device exists and can detect a new condition that 5% of the US population has with a 80% false positive rate, and the condition was as serious as heart disease this would really be a miracle device and people would be grateful that such a thing exists.

Since we're overly simplifying, there _are_ devices that can detect conditions that 5% of the population has _and_ have far fewer false positives - X-rays, CT scans, MRI. In the grand scheme amazing things, but no-one's calling them "miracle devices".

> there _are_ devices that can detect conditions that 5% of the population has _and_ have far fewer false positives - X-rays, CT scans, MRI.

Perhaps, but you can't wear one on your wrist and you generally have to be quite sure something is wrong first.

Oh, but they are miracle devices, and were considered as such initially. But the difference between them and the hypothetical miracle device is accessibility. MRIs and CT scans are not something you can use to casually test half of the country's population.

You might be right in an ideal world, but in reality there are significant resource constraints on healthcare.

What would be more likely to happen in that scenario, is that so many people would be seeking care that the 5% who were positive would be unlikely to even get the care they need.

Further, such an influx would have knock-on effects on unrelated patients, whose care would suffer due to the severe lack of resources.

This is all magnified if the resource is not a general practice physician, but a specialist.

> Further, such an influx would have knock-on effects on unrelated patients, whose care would suffer due to the severe lack of resources.

Hypothetically, let's assume over a long period of time new devices are alerting users to possible medical conditions. Those appointments are paid for (I'm guessing). Will that money not fund more availability over time? The supply of doctors is not supposed to be fixed.

That really does sound like ideology cloaked in common sense. Demand for great healthcare is already essentially infinite no matter what new technology comes along, and we need a sane way to deal with that. Pointing fingers at the demand side is a common diversionary tactic.

Wait - but if I'm reading the article correctly, it's not the case that all these people are flooding the ER, requiring urgent care. An alert pops up, a person is concerned, they decide to schedule a visit to their doctor.

If the healthcare system - paid healthcare system - can't handle a slow baseline increase in non-emergency visits, then something is seriously wrong with this picture.

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