Medicine is a large topic. It requires many years of memorization, experience, etc., and then it requires continuing education and constant practice. This makes the costs of medicine very high.
There is an opportunity for technology to help lower costs. The opportunity was identified decades ago, when the first work was done on expert systems for medicine.
The problem is that this means that if we succeed at applying technology to lowering the cost of medicine, it will look a lot like patients self-diagnosing. In rich countries we really don't like that. In poor countries self-diagnostics is common.
We can lower the cost of care by having lower credentialed providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners handle the simple cases. Patients in rich countries have already been self diagnosing for years.
Medicine is a large topic. It requires many years of memorization, experience, etc., and then it requires continuing education and constant practice. This makes the costs of medicine very high.
There is an opportunity for technology to help lower costs. The opportunity was identified decades ago, when the first work was done on expert systems for medicine.
The problem is that this means that if we succeed at applying technology to lowering the cost of medicine, it will look a lot like patients self-diagnosing. In rich countries we really don't like that. In poor countries self-diagnostics is common.