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Arvind Narayanan's avatar

Thanks for sharing my post about radiology. Just to clarify, are your hypotheses in addition to the one I proposed (the hard parts are the boundaries between tasks) or are you saying that that hypothesis does not seem plausible to you? Cheers.

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Steve Newman's avatar

On re-reading, I think I did not express myself well. My second bullet was meant to encompass the idea that what's missing may be the boundaries between tasks ("messy gap-filling work that’s hard to study").

I do find it very plausible that the hard parts, at least for AI, are the boundaries between neatly-defined tasks – and that this likely is a significant, perhaps primary, reason that radiology is not more automated.

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Arvind Narayanan's avatar

Ah, got it. Thanks for clarifying.

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Ethan Heppner's avatar

I absolutely think there is a lot of room for AI to improve healthcare administration. But the larger question is are the incentives there?

An example that's fresh in my mind: I recently received a bill in the mail for a $10 copay. The bill mentioned an option for paying online, but this was broken. So I had to pay over the phone. This system was entirely automated, and probably doesn't cost the provider that much to maintain, so there might not be much of an incentive to fix it. This terrible UX that the customer has no choice but to deal with-- typing in all of my information digit by digit rather than using autocompleted fields online.

Ultimately though, I wonder what led the process to be the way it was. Why couldn't I have just quickly paid the $10 at the office rather than receiving multiple reminders in the mail and going through this whole process?

I wonder how much innovation is held back by a lack of competition and accountability to end consumers of healthcare.

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