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Comment by astrofinch | Hacker News Reader

I know this might sound a tad heretical, but if Watson gets to be as good as or better than a doctor, do we really need doctors anymore?

The theoretical upper bound on Watson's ability is a lot higher than the theoretical upper bound on a doctor's, since it can make inferences based on a vastly larger data set.

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Watson may be able to recommend you get surgery, but he won't be able to perform the surgery himself. He's only moving in on one aspect of medicine. Matching symptoms to diagnoses is the thing that machines are most clearly suited for in the entire medical profession, because of the vast volume of possible measurements and diagnoses, and because humans' various cognitive biases don't work well with the probabilistic nature of the work. That's still a rather narrow range of work. Humans will remain superior at performing medical work for quite a while. And until true Strong AI, humans will also remain superior for quite a large amount of gathering information that Watson requires, especially psychological measurements, and for making decisions that involve quality-of-life and other ethical considerations beyond just probability of success.

tl;dr Watson can, and will, exceed doctor's capability for a certain, somewhat narrow, range of their function. Doctors will still be necessary for the other things that they do.

Watson may not be able to perform surgery, but with "telesurgery" becoming a reality, maybe we can offshore it and still save 80%.

I've always wondered about this. What happens when the network goes down in the middle of open-heart surgery?

"And until true Strong AI"

Watson seems like a significant step in that direction.

http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/products/ Amazing, 3D vision robots. Very graceful translation of hand movements into the robots arms. Very nice product. Currently only for laparoscopic intra-abdominal surgery. Not yet automated. They have DaVinci assisted cardiac surgery programs developing in some parts of the country.

Robot assisted airway manipulation http://www.anesthesia-analgesia.org/content/111/4/929.abstra...

This robot could intubate you. DaVinci could operate on you.

We'd still need surgeons until the robots are good enough. We'd need radiologists until they can add decent computer vision. Ditto for pathologists and other vision-intensive specialties. Orthopods are very hands-on and collect information through channels other than words. So there's a suite spot in the spectrum of doctors for something like Watson. I'd wonder about the ability to ask questions and ferret out socially-obvious problems like broken arms from abuse if Watson were a first provider.

Presumably you'd couple something like Watson with a world-savvy human physician assistant that acts as its eyes, ears, and touch.

To the extent that abuse is a medical diagnosis, it would be trivial for a computer to make that presumptive diagnosis. In fact, if Watson is truly performing at the level of an M2, it probably already can.

Actually, I'd think the first signs of abuse would be the most difficult things for a computer to diagnose. Excuses are given, nobody says anything about violence, the person slipped, but the non-verbal cues might raise a red flag.

I'm not sure how much common sense world knowledge would be in Watson. "Hey doc, I got a pain in my chest while watching the football game vs Cal at Memorial Stadium." The DDX might include angina despite the computer being unlikely to know about a fan's emotions or environment of a football game.

For emerging diseases, advanced malingering, etc, you definitely need real life actual breathing human beings. Otherwise, sure, physicians are just as theoretically replaceable as any information-as-a-service workers might be.

Edit: I didn't realize this was even a controversial statement to make. First, to be clear, when I'm in the hospital and say "doctor" I'm usually thinking non-surgeon, as I am here. Second, you will always need supervision of the machines, just not 1-to-1 supervision. Not every interaction brings up ethical questions, for example. Sometimes someone really just has a viral URI.

Watson isn't a replacement for the physician. It's a physician's extender, a tool that allows a physician to "see" more patients in a day and provide diagnostic results in a more timely manner. The physician will still be the one responsible for the final judgment call.

BTW, it would have been nice if the journalist had bothered to consistently spell the doctor's name correctly (it's Siegel, not Siegal).

For diagnosis maybe not, but we will still need surgeons, unless IBM comes up with a really good autonomous robot that can perform surgery.

Can't sue a computer.

Legally, someone has to be responsible for the healthcare provided to the patient. The patient shoulders some of it, true, assuming they're basically competent adults and not severely impaired. (That's why powers of attorney exist, and why physicians are empowered to 'fire' non-compliant patients.) However, the MD is the one who has had the training and who is legally authorized to exercise medical judgement (as opposed to nursing judgement, and no, I'm not going to even try to get into where the arbitrary line between them falls), so the MD is the one who ultimately decides the treatment strategy, which may involve referrals to other MDs, who also must be legally capable of exercising medical judgement.

So, legally, there has to be someone to sanction (threaten with malpractice lawsuits and loss of licensure, among other things) and it's probably better for everyone involved if that person has personal contact with the patient.

You can sue the creator of the computer, or the owner of the computer.

You can sue anyone for anything, but unless the computer system is certified by the FDA as a "Medical Device" then you're unlikely to win a judgment. It would be like suing the publisher of a diagnosis textbook that contained incorrect information. That's the reason that clinical decision support vendors typically design their systems to just show possibilities rather than explicitly making a diagnostic recommendation. It's ultimately still up to the doctor and so the doctor bears all of the legal responsibility.

Yes, but the comment I was replying to was within the context of all doctors being replaced by computers, and his point was that it couldn't happen because there needs to be a person to blame. Well, if you get rid of the people (except those creating the computers), then it is still possible to sue the computer owner and/or creator.

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