Reduce Healthcare Costs
I went to a seminar in NYC in the middle of October. One of the speakers was Sharon Bertsch McGrayne (writer, author
of “The Theory That Would not Die”). She told how Bayesian-oriented research company (Metron) was able to find the
blackbox recorder of the doomed Air France flight 477 when others failed. If you study the problem of finding those
black boxes, you will find that humans and human instinct failed for almost two years and that the Metron company was
able to find it in one week using artificial intelligence techniques.
Another problem with humans is they can be stubborn. If they think that the Sun goes around the earth, they will
persecute you for claiming that the earth goes around the sun.
Geologists accumulated the evidence for Continental Drift in 1912 and then spent 50 years arguing with other
geologists (of the old school) who maintained that continents cannot move.
R2 is a robotic system (named after R2D2) that has been designed to read X-rays and diagnose breast cancer. It can
do it better than any regular human radiologist and as well as those human radiologists who specialize in breast cancer
diagnosis.
R2 corporation was purchased by Hologix (saving women's lives) and has been somewhat "hidden" so that it will not
threaten the jobs of human radiologists.
I talked to Dave Kelso last week about the use of the IBM Watson intelligent computer as a medical diagnosis tool. He
has had experience in creating electronics to help doctors and he warned me that doctors will fight the computers tooth
and nail. (12/10/2011)
Now, you may want to hope that the doctors succeed because doctors have "good paying jobs" and we want to
preserve "good paying jobs" in this country.
On the other hand, you know how your visit to the ER at Condell was taken advantage of by many of the doctors on
duty that day. They milked the system for $5000 (do I remember correctly?) and you and I have used this as an
example of why healthcare is so expensive and getting more expensive all of the time. Meanwhile the price of computers
keeps coming down. You can buy more powerful computers every year that goes by.
The view of IBM at the conference I attended is that once any field of endeavor becomes part of the Information
Technology field, the cost will come down in time. This is the approach that Barack Obama is taking. He wants to start
by automating all of the patient data and also automate the process of prescriptions. Walgreens and CVS pharmacies
want to have doctors and nurses on site for small problems like colds and flu. IBM wants to use computers to lower the
cost of healthcare and will attempt to eventually have them in the pharmacies and hospitals. If the doctors keep them
out of the hospitals, then perhaps they will find their home in the pharmacies. Nobody knows how it will turn out.
My point is this. IF you use computers, you can bring down the cost of healthcare. If you want to pay a lot of doctors a
lot of money, the system and the country will go bankrupt.
Next
I went to a seminar in NYC in the middle of October. One of the speakers was Sharon Bertsch McGrayne (writer, author
of “The Theory That Would not Die”). She told how Bayesian-oriented research company (Metron) was able to find the
blackbox recorder of the doomed Air France flight 477 when others failed. If you study the problem of finding those
black boxes, you will find that humans and human instinct failed for almost two years and that the Metron company was
able to find it in one week using artificial intelligence techniques.
Another problem with humans is they can be stubborn. If they think that the Sun goes around the earth, they will
persecute you for claiming that the earth goes around the sun.
Geologists accumulated the evidence for Continental Drift in 1912 and then spent 50 years arguing with other
geologists (of the old school) who maintained that continents cannot move.
R2 is a robotic system (named after R2D2) that has been designed to read X-rays and diagnose breast cancer. It can
do it better than any regular human radiologist and as well as those human radiologists who specialize in breast cancer
diagnosis.
R2 corporation was purchased by Hologix (saving women's lives) and has been somewhat "hidden" so that it will not
threaten the jobs of human radiologists.
I talked to Dave Kelso last week about the use of the IBM Watson intelligent computer as a medical diagnosis tool. He
has had experience in creating electronics to help doctors and he warned me that doctors will fight the computers tooth
and nail. (12/10/2011)
Now, you may want to hope that the doctors succeed because doctors have "good paying jobs" and we want to
preserve "good paying jobs" in this country.
On the other hand, you know how your visit to the ER at Condell was taken advantage of by many of the doctors on
duty that day. They milked the system for $5000 (do I remember correctly?) and you and I have used this as an
example of why healthcare is so expensive and getting more expensive all of the time. Meanwhile the price of computers
keeps coming down. You can buy more powerful computers every year that goes by.
The view of IBM at the conference I attended is that once any field of endeavor becomes part of the Information
Technology field, the cost will come down in time. This is the approach that Barack Obama is taking. He wants to start
by automating all of the patient data and also automate the process of prescriptions. Walgreens and CVS pharmacies
want to have doctors and nurses on site for small problems like colds and flu. IBM wants to use computers to lower the
cost of healthcare and will attempt to eventually have them in the pharmacies and hospitals. If the doctors keep them
out of the hospitals, then perhaps they will find their home in the pharmacies. Nobody knows how it will turn out.
My point is this. IF you use computers, you can bring down the cost of healthcare. If you want to pay a lot of doctors a
lot of money, the system and the country will go bankrupt.
Next
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