Doctor here. I know HN loves to hate on doctors, but your framing is just ridiculous.
The medical world moves at a glacial pace compared to tech. Complaining that ML algos haven't swept the industry ignores all of the factors pushing it in that direction.
"Best medicine" operates on a consensus model of the most prudent decision-making given present knowledge and evidence. That takes time. Pushing boundaries as a doctor outside of a research environment doesn't earn you brownie points. It increases your chances of getting sued.
You also dramatically overestimate the amount of autonomy any given doctor has over the tools they are able to use. The vast majority are employees. It is like if you worked at Google as a SWE, and I came on HN ranting that you don't want to use the most recent release of Sonnet 3.5 to help you write features faster for Gmail, because you're "fiercely protective of your salary." You would laugh at how ignorant the complaint sounds.
I'm blaming the regulatory apparatus more for that one. These image based algos are ones that could be DTC but of course the FDA (with a side of lobbying) would never ever allow that.
> You also dramatically overestimate the amount of autonomy any given doctor has over the tools they are able to use.
I'm not saying that doctors are mostly choosing not to use these tools - but that lobbying organizations involving collectives of doctors would lobby against it if it ever tried to do a DTC approach or something like that. Please, steelman what I'm saying - I am very aware that doctors who don't own their practice (vast majority of them) cannot simply choose their tools and even those with their own practice are often limited by what they can bill. I know lots of doctors personally.
The medical world moves at a glacial pace compared to tech. Complaining that ML algos haven't swept the industry ignores all of the factors pushing it in that direction.
"Best medicine" operates on a consensus model of the most prudent decision-making given present knowledge and evidence. That takes time. Pushing boundaries as a doctor outside of a research environment doesn't earn you brownie points. It increases your chances of getting sued.
You also dramatically overestimate the amount of autonomy any given doctor has over the tools they are able to use. The vast majority are employees. It is like if you worked at Google as a SWE, and I came on HN ranting that you don't want to use the most recent release of Sonnet 3.5 to help you write features faster for Gmail, because you're "fiercely protective of your salary." You would laugh at how ignorant the complaint sounds.