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Comment by choeger | Hacker News Reader

Now here's an application for "AI": have a ultrasound device the size of a medical tricorder from Star Trek in every household with children. If child gets one of the dozens of inevitable infections, use the device to check for the standard complications (otitis media, pneumonia ...) and allow a physician to replace 95% or more of the visits with a remote diagnostic.

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Agree in principle with remote diagnostics in this way. But, the number of acute illnesses that can be diagnosed with US and can/should be treated at home is fairly small. Pneumonia cannot be detected by US unless it is up against the chest wall (or perhaps if it causes excess fluid in the pleural space). An otitis media diagnosis would not be possible with US. Appendicitis can be seen with US but it is very operator-dependent and asking parents to fish around for the appendix would be a big ask (even with some rather advanced AI assistance). You can certainly find enlarged lymph nodes but fingers are often just as good.

My understanding is that's not how ultrasound works?

CT and MRI give pretty clean images that even a layman can understand. I have no problem identifying things on them.

Ultrasound is looking for a vague voxel of density that is or isn't where it's supposed to be. The implies that you need to know what the density looks like when it's normal vs abnormal. It's more like "Your liver is supposed to be there but there is a blob of water instead. Let's get you a CT scan." If it's abnormal, then you go confirm with a high-resolution scan system.

This has a LOT of room for error. Ultrasound is how they identify gallstones, but, in my case, the ultrasound said "Yeah, you've got some gallstones, but no big deal." When they removed them after my gallbladder exploded, they were almost an inch and a half across. The problem is that gallstones are mostly just globs of cholesterol that isn't much diferent in density from the surrounding fluid.

Ultrasound is okay, but cheaper, smaller, faster CT/MRI systems that don't need contrast dye would enable far better diagnosis as it would put imaging much closer to office physicians.

Of we can get AI to produce good quality images from ultrasound sensors and then to interpret the images, we can reduce the level of training required to use such devices.

Imagine high school and junior high health classes teaching the use of these devices, getting the students certifications that require maybe 8 hours of coursework plus a 30-minute exam, then sending most of the clas home with a 21st century tricorder.

There's already a "pandemic" of incorrect and/or hypochondriac "at home" diagnosis going on, along with quack pseudoscience to cure things, ranging from essential oils to bleach enemas; we don't need more of that.

This is also an answer to a perceived problem, mixed with the XY problem; the problem isn't that there's not enough at-home diagnostic tools (a thermometer is enough for most households), the problem is access to health care, which has been messed with directly (cost of health care) and indirectly (people's physical health due to overconsumption, mental health due to gestures everywhere vaguely) by capitalism.

> There's already a "pandemic" of incorrect and/or hypochondriac "at home" diagnosis going on, along with quack pseudoscience

There is also a revolution in hone medical technology.

It takes a long time for us lay people with cool medical gadgets we got off eBay to learn what the results mean, but we will get there.

If fed.gov wants to help, they could test these devices, then offer training and certification so those who take advantage of the certification classes will know how to get reliable results and (more importantly) what the machines can not do.

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