How about a surgeon that's been up for 36 hours, hungry, with a splitting headachy, and some family problems on the mind. A human surgeon might be awesome and can still make a ton of mistakes for reasons unrelated to their medical abilities. Meanwhile, while a programmer could easily make a mistake, other people and tests of the code could spot a lot of mistakes that could be corrected before the system reaches its first patient.
I'm going to take a different tack: How about we stop hazing medical professionals at the beginning of their career and only ask them to work 8 hour shifts with an appropriate amount of time off until their next shift?
Along with lmm's comment, where would all the extra doctors come from? You can't cut hours worked in half (or close to it) without doubling your staff to meet the demand. US hospitals (especially ERs) are already running over patient capacity in many US cities
Simple, make the hell of residency go away, and allow more foreign doctors to come in to US and practice after going through a reasonable residency program. I have known very smart and competent Russian and Ukrainian doctors who work as lab employees because they are not allowed to practice medicine here.
Great idea. But how do we get to there from here? Particularly when doctors' professional bodies are large, powerful, and full of people who are convinced that that never did them any harm?
As a software developer who has been stitched back together by an MD who has been on shift for 36 hours, I'm with the machine also. No relevant paternal affiliation.
My guess is that the software will be better at the well know tasks. And similarly to automatic cars, they will struggle with the unusual scenarios. (Saying that I don't know a great deal about surgery).
