Comment by renewiltord

Comment by renewiltord 2 days ago

16 replies

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Amusingly this is why people say LLMs will beat doctors. It’s because the 90% of cases is so easy that a motivated guy with Google can get there and a smart NP can get there too.

It isn’t that it’s easy to do all a doctor does. But their training and knowledge shines in the 99th percentile case except they never exercise it there so you can usually get there with Google.

“Oh but an LLM will guess the common case and never think of the rare!”

Yeah but so will a doctor given 10 minutes on it. They’re not exactly going to House MD you. You’re gonna die.

toomuchtodo 2 days ago

I discovered a friend’s chronic medical issue that two VA specialists and a PCP couldn’t figure out using an LLM health project that had been posted here. Works when it works, n=1. Certainly, don’t trust the robot, but it doesn’t hurt to rubber duck debug with it to find blind spots. Fancy search engine sometimes is right (although it can lie too!).

(Bone tuberculosis)

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giantg2 2 days ago

I think a great use case for AI is to act as triage for a new case so that it can send you to the right specialist and have them evaluate you. It could potentially remove the need to see a GP for a referral to a specialist, thus freeing the GP up to spend more time treating others.

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  • cess11 2 days ago

    How are you going to make it reliably stop people that lie to get into contact with medical professions?

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    • rincebrain 2 days ago

      Why does it matter if they do?

      I've seen a lot of doctors who insist patients must be making up things when they say "but XYZ", and my question becomes...so what?

      If someone credibly lies to you and gets codeine or ritalin or something once or twice...that's not really significant, in terms of negative outcomes.

      If someone lies to reach a medical professional, then you treat them like any other bad customer interaction and stop doing business with them after some point.

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      • cess11 9 hours ago

        You're going to have to choose, denying people in need directly, or doing it indirectly because other people game the process and get in the way of those in need.

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  • renewiltord 2 days ago

    You don't need a GP for referral to a specialist currently. You just have to pay. It's what I do.

    But I understand what you're saying. Insurance gates these but could do so with their own tech rather than relying on the third party. Could help with keeping loss ratios at the minimum.

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    • antasvara 2 days ago

      >Insurance gates these but could do so with their own tech rather than relying on the third party. Could help with keeping loss ratios at the minimum.

      I work in insurance. In my experience, the fact that you have to go to the doctor for a referral discourages people from getting said referral.

      So the tradeoff is that you would get fewer referral-specific visits (i.e. person going to their GP to get a specialist referral) at the likely expense of more specialist visits.

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      • pyuser583 a day ago

        Strange, I have conditions that require specialists, including a very rare type of specialty.

        Never had a problem just calling them up and making an appointment. Insurance never cared either.

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        • johnmaguire a day ago

          Different insurance plans have different restrictions. A PPO typically requires a referral while an HDHP does not.

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    • BobbyTables2 2 days ago

      Specialists differ from GPs in that if you ask them the time, they will have their eyes open when they read the broken clock on the wall.

      I have no idea what good GPs serve besides flu testing. Sounds unfair but they generally seem uninformed about pretty common medical conditions.

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    • edmundsauto 2 days ago

      In my experience (arthritis), specialists typically won't take direct appointments without a referral. They don't want to triage the 90%, and most offices are booked weeks-to-months in advance...

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      • alistairSH 2 days ago

        IME, it’s highly dependent on region and specialty.

        I can get into local dermatologists without problem. But an endocrinologist takes a referral (because there are so few, and they’re all fully booked).

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baxtr 2 days ago

Why "beat"? Why not "augment" or "improve"?

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