doctor ignorance

[Guest guest]

I made some snippets of a long web article (URL at end) which

I append below. It demonstrates why doctors can't possibly diagnose

everything, what is being developed to help, and why docs are

resistant to using it. I am no real big fan of the allopaths, but

if I were to turn to them, I sure would want them making accurate

diagnoses.

 

Alobar

 

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What your doctor doesn't know could kill you

 

A computer program that provides vast amounts of information for

diagnosing and treating patients could revolutionize the practice of

medicine. So why won't physicians use it?

 

By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 7/14/2002

 

" The issue is not who is right but how the patient can be helped, "

Cross wrote me in an e-mail. " Physician response to new information,

especially when they have not done their homework, sometimes results

in pretty violent behavior. That is embarrassing to report, but I

have been at this quite a while, and it is a fact of life. "

 

One of the great myths of modern medicine, often perpetuated by the

doctors themselves, is that the physician knows best. As health care

organizations seek ways to make medical care more reliable, some are

installing systems to automate billing and prescriptions. Doctors are

going online to answer e-mail from patients. And a few providers have

sought for years to create databases of patient records that can be

easily accessed by physicians across a health care organization. But

Weed, the creator of Knowledge Couplers, argues that none have truly

explored the most basic limitation confronting doctors: They are

trying to do something they simply cannot do.

 

Humans, Weed argues, cannot consistently process all of the

information needed to diagnose and treat a complicated problem. The

more information the physician gets about a patient, the more complex

the task becomes. A doctor working without software to augment the

mind, he argues, is like a scientist working without a microscope to

augment the eye.

 

Some accomplished physicians and scientists who have explored ways to

use artificial intelligence to diagnose patients say that it is

impossible with today's technology. Many other doctors strongly

oppose the mere concept, calling software incapable of matching their

expertise; computers merely get in the way, they argue. But a small

band of physicians and Weed's company's biggest customer, the US

Department of Defense, have begun to use the Knowledge Couplers, and

an early study suggests that their patients are healthier for it. If

the software catches on, Weed's ideas may forever change the way

doctors make decisions, removing much of the mystery and leaving us,

the patients, with more control over our care. Weed's supporters say

the medical industry will one day recognize the genius behind the

software, much as it recognized the promise of Weed's first major

innovation, which changed medicine four decades ago.

 

 

 

Asking doctors to make decisions using their memories alone, he says,

is like asking a travel agent to book a client's journey from

memorized flight schedules.

mong doctors, stories circulate about crack physicians who make

brilliant diagnoses on cases that had puzzled their colleagues. These

hotshots are able to perform superbly the physician's most

fundamental task: Observe the patient, make a mental list of the

symptoms, then match those symptoms with the patterns of a diagnosis.

But what happens when you get sick and aren't seen by such a doctor?

As Dr. Donald M. Berwick, a clinical professor of pediatrics and

health care policy at the Harvard Medical School, says, genius

diagnosticians " make great stories, but they don't make great health

care. The idea is to make accuracy reliable, not heroic. "

 

Weed will tell you that he could teach a 15-year-old to use his

software. He argues that medical schools, or " diploma mills, " as he

calls them, teach students to remember the answers to questions they

never asked and memorize observations that they never made. That, he

says, is the antithesis of scientific training.

 

http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2002/0714/coverstory.htm