Medicine will be Computer Science

[Admin Khan]

The following is my opinion. I look forward to a civilized discussion.

As the great Dr.Michio Kaku said:
Medicine is going to be reduced to Computer Science. Computer Science will dominate almost all medicine in the future.

IMO, Being a Physician is looking more and more like a waste of time, when you look at it's return value, and the amount of pain one needs to endure, along with the enormous debt you end up having bestowed upon you. Today, I was at a meeting, and we had some Physicians from Einstein Medical college, Columbia, and an Engineer from Harvard and to be very honest here, each regretted their decision -- not because they did not enjoy the field, but the amount of psychological stress their debt has given them, and it's sky-rocketting interest rate. If it's your dream job, go for it. In no shape or form am I trying to discourage you, but for the sake in which ever God you believe in, focus on realizing that it can potentially destroy your life -- especially if you don't get into medical school, and have all that debt left for your grandchildren to pay off.

I urge those who are interested in becoming a Physician to strictly enter the field if they can handle the financial mess it brings, and if they truly enjoy it, when I say truly, I mean recognizing that it's worth nearly a million dollars. Other than that, a Computer Science degree, from a school like MIT, Stony Brook, Columbia, CalTech, Harvey-Mudd, CMU, UCB, and other project-driven schools(try to avoid the purely theoretical schools) is far more valuable at an undergraduate level. Computer Science is the future, and I urge the Pashtun youth to enter this field. Before you choose a school, don't worry about it's national ranking, strictly focus on the ranking of your major. A school like Stony Brook might be top 100, and not top 20, but they can certainly, from what I have recently realized, give schools like Yale University, Dartmouth, and other 'ivies' a run for their money in competitions(Think ACM where they were ranked 2nd in the region, yet their tuition is only $3K per semester), quality, not to mention their quality faculty. I learned from RTR recently that the president of Stanford is a Stony Brook Computer Science grad, so I guess those guys do make it big, and have a high CS ranking. A school like City College of New York is unranked, yet for EE they have prestigious companies that recruit for that major. I also recently learned the Intel was founded by it's EE grad. The same goes for most CUNY and SUNY schools, although I prefer the Pukhtun nation to aim for Carnegie Mellon and MIT. When judging a school, focus more on the ranking of your major, not it's global ranking, also look at career surveys to see who recruits, and where the students end up at.

To Physicists, remember that Computer Scientists are on the verge of completely redefining medicine, and their job descriptions. Technology, in specific AI is the future.
Skip to 49:20
Are We Ready For the Coming 'Age of Abundance?' - Dr. Michio Kaku (Full) - YouTube


Caveat:
I look forward to constructive criticism for my not so subtle thoughts.

[Friend]

Well may be you are right but I look at it from a different angle. When I look around myself in the developed countries the use of computer and IT is increasing and the negative effect of this huge and wide spread uncontroled use is on the economy. it has reduced jobs enormously. For example if you go to a petrol sation you see a single computer is doing the job of 3 to four guys. If you to a store there you would see the number of employees are being decreased the reason they give is that they cant afford to keep persons because the same job of 4 guys can be done by a single computer or any other computerised device. it means that it has deprived 4 guys of their jobs. it is benefiting only a special class and not the common man. How do you see at this at this aspect of IT and CS especialy in this period of time when the whole world specially the developed world is going down economically and the jobless peoples number is increasing day by day.

[ډګروال]

this cooku is one of those hollywood scientists.
he actually thinks human in the near furute will merge with robots and live forever.


listen to this cook and his type 1 civilisation.
Dr. Michio Kaku about Future Civilizations - YouTube

[RevolutionThroughReason]

this cooku is one of those hollywood scientists.
he actually thinks human in the near furute will merge with robots and live forever.


listen to this cook and his type 1 civilisation.

What would stop it from coming true?


do you plan on suicide bombing University Research centers?

[Toramana]

Unfortunately Mr Kako is a little bit prone to hyperbole.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

You know I recall we had a discussion once about the impact of computer science and its relationship with other fields, particularly mathematics. While I've always acknowledged the significance of computers in every field, particularly mathematics as a fool; as I use computer information systems like ArcGIS and computer algebra and computational packages like Matlab and Mathematica as tools to help me with problems and modeling. However I never fully took the belief that computers are not only the tools but actually its becoming more apparent to me that computers are not just the tools but the foundations and even the progenitor of new sciences and developments in existing sciences. Now I'd like to crosspolinate a stronger computational background by learning different programming languages and programming architecture in my career and learning. I recently took a Computer based Numerical Analysis class, and the need for computers just to create the models needed to verify and develop techniques was central.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Unfortunately Mr Kako is a little bit prone to hyperbole.

haha he is , but he capture's the imagination and he presents an objective to work towards if we continue a strong concentrated path with the developments we have.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

The following is my opinion. I look forward to a civilized discussion.

As the great Dr.Michio Kaku said:
Medicine is going to be reduced to Computer Science. Computer Science will dominate almost all medicine in the future.

IMO, Being a Physician is looking more and more like a waste of time, when you look at it's return value, and the amount of pain one needs to endure, along with the enormous debt you end up having bestowed upon you. Today, I was at a meeting, and we had some Physicians from Einstein Medical college, Columbia, and an Engineer from Harvard and to be very honest here, each regretted their decision -- not because they did not enjoy the field, but the amount of psychological stress their debt has given them, and it's sky-rocketting interest rate. If it's your dream job, go for it. In no shape or form am I trying to discourage you, but for the sake in which ever God you believe in, focus on realizing that it can potentially destroy your life -- especially if you don't get into medical school, and have all that debt left for your grandchildren to pay off.

I urge those who are interested in becoming a Physician to strictly enter the field if they can handle the financial mess it brings, and if they truly enjoy it, when I say truly, I mean recognizing that it's worth nearly a million dollars. Other than that, a Computer Science degree, from a school like MIT, Stony Brook, Columbia, CalTech, Harvey-Mudd, CMU, UCB, and other project-driven schools(try to avoid the purely theoretical schools) is far more valuable at an undergraduate level. Computer Science is the future, and I urge the Pashtun youth to enter this field. Before you choose a school, don't worry about it's national ranking, strictly focus on the ranking of your major. A school like Stony Brook might be top 100, and not top 20, but they can certainly, from what I have recently realized, give schools like Yale University, Dartmouth, and other 'ivies' a run for their money in competitions(Think ACM where they were ranked 2nd in the region, yet their tuition is only $3K per semester), quality, not to mention their quality faculty. I learned from RTR recently that the president of Stanford is a Stony Brook Computer Science grad, so I guess those guys do make it big, and have a high CS ranking. A school like City College of New York is unranked, yet for EE they have prestigious companies that recruit for that major. I also recently learned the Intel was founded by it's EE grad. The same goes for most CUNY and SUNY schools, although I prefer the Pukhtun nation to aim for Carnegie Mellon and MIT. When judging a school, focus more on the ranking of your major, not it's global ranking, also look at career surveys to see who recruits, and where the students end up at.

To Physicists, remember that Computer Scientists are on the verge of completely redefining medicine, and their job descriptions. Technology, in specific AI is the future.
Skip to 49:20
Are We Ready For the Coming 'Age of Abundance?' - Dr. Michio Kaku (Full) - YouTube


Caveat:
I look forward to constructive criticism for my not so subtle thoughts.

Admin, Salamoona

I liked this video because of the entertainment value... but I think he's way far off.

There are shades of gray in every system.

Here is why, based on my experience that I think its not going to come to computers as we know them now being able to algorithmically diagnose.

The key lies in the first part of training in medicine: The simple history and physical.

There are already programs out there liked diagnasourus that attempt to create a diagnosing machine... but the inaccuracy is staggering. The reason is that how human beings phrase what ails them is so complex that the debate in medicine to this day is:

Occam's razor versus Hickam's dictum.

The former sought to say that if a patient comes in you try and unify his diagnosis with one underlying ailment and the latter said that if the patient gives you 10 complaints consider each of them as separate etiologies.

As a simple example: Not all heart attack pain comes to us with the same presentation: Some describe this pain as pressure like or a vice grip below the sterum; others like the famous Debakey's wife described a burning belly sensation, yet others describe spasming and left arm pain and jaw numbness. Others have an ear ache. Men and women, diabetics and non present radically differently.

An example where many institutions tried the computer science and algorithmic route and failed comes to mind. If you have a heart attack that affects the right side of your heart, the electrical wiring of the heart may be in jeapordy. While a common treatment used is a drug that decreases the amount of force the heart generates and the heart rate - and the dispensation of this drug (Metoprolol) became an outcome measure for hospitals and the computers demanded that the physician check off that it was given - it went against so much logic. If you gave a patietn with a right sided heart attack this drug without a proper evaluation done by a thinking being, you could block their heart rate down to the point that you hurt them.

Another great example is a recent case I saw. An 80 year old man came in with chest pain that was severe and the ED docs had the younger fellows evaluate him and various chemical markers indicated some level of heart strain. In between the diagnostic cath and the interventional cath I performed an echo (ultrasound of the heart) and saw a sign concerning not for heart attack but a lung clot. When I got the chance to talk to the patient myself he felt his chest pain was secondary to severe air hunger.

Finally, medicine is an art as much as it is a science. A great clinician, takes a honed common sensical approach to figuring out what ails the patient. The history and physical and the skills utilized to glean from the patient what ails him allows him to order the least costly but most sensitive and specific tests. Further testing should be used to hone down the diagnosis further. No program exists yet that can accomplish this or accomodate the wide degree of variations that lead to diagnosis. It will probably be 50 to 75 years before we get anything to the level of Watson from Jeapardy in the medical arena.

Another example: I was treating an Afghan refugee once who complained of many headaches and neurological issues. It took a lengthy time period and repeated visits to really nail down his diagnosis. He was offering up information such as "My mother tells me that piryaan visited me and grabbed my head as a child" to discussing the effects of seizure medications on himself. It all actually boiled down to the effects of one of his medications that he had been given in India. I dont think a computer exists that is powerful enough to replicate this process.

Or take the DaVinci robot. Heart surgeons tried to coopt it from Urologists and found that it was extraneous to their superb skillsets they gain from training. It turned out to be a dud that merely lateralized care instead of augmenting it.

Take also the growth of imaging and radiological processing algorithms. Everyone said it was the death knell of medicine then. Quiet the contrary; radiology is a booming field with probably one of the best lifestyles available to modern man as a career. People can practice that field on the beach in Tahiti peripherally. The author of First Aid from Yale is himself a radiologist and does all his work on the Hawaiiaan Coastline with his computer. So in that setting technology became dependent on man, not vice versa. Medicine doctors as a general field did not have the time or the training to learn the advanced analysis inherent to medical imagery, hence radiological training was born.

And the amazing thing is that they even bought outsourcing to heel in a way that Comp Scientists and Engineers can only dream of! When hospitals started beaming imagery to India to get read, the medical lobby and radiological societies immediatly protected the field and put in place strict governmental action to gaurantee that American Radiologists signed off on the foreign reads. So now, a radiologist actually has reduced his work load even further since he merely can sign off after a cursory glance at his Indian colleagues read and he can bill for his time. Not a bad spot to be in.

The hardest thing about being any of the STEM fields is the utter lack of control one has on his destiny. Top engineers that trained me in various fortune 500 companies could rise in the ranks and then experience a sudden undercutting due to economic pressure. After all, why would Johnson and Johnson care about an esteemed professorial engineer and pay him whatthey can 4 new graduates?

In medicine, as I advance in the ranks I find that the longer you are in the field, the more valuable you become to the system. The boarding exams and the continuing medical education requirements for licensing ensure that folks from Braunwald's era are up to date with the cutting edge stem cell therapies (failures and successes).

The folks that you talked to at Einstein might be of the grass is greener on the other side variety. Medicine, like all walks of life has many many subspecialties and lifestyle varies between them all. They all provide excellent job security at a competitive salary but their lifestyle requirements are not equal. For example, a cardiac surgeon will work hard for most of his life... he will not be the Tahiti Beach resident like the radiologist. The internist will see tons nad tons of patients to keep his practice afloat and will feel heat from NPs and PAs... but his specialist collagues will not feel that pain. Usually the folks that work the hardest early on specialize and avoid the pitfalls of the latter situation.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

At the end of the day, as technology grows... physicians will be very attuned to harnessing it and being the master of it as opposed to letting it harness the field.

There are already computeres that read EKGs, but Physicians have to check them over because they are often misdiagnosing a heart attack. That simple example shows that even if a Watson like computer came to medicine; internists would probably lobby and take hold of it for their own benefit. This has always been the trait of medicine: control the field, set standards, demand licensing and professional standards, and control your own salary. The only threat to the latter will be that the American economy may create a situation where the public will allow for governmental oversight and eliminate waste by demanding more documentation and analysis from physicians. ICD diagnosis codes are multiplying but at the same time that is creating a niche for PAs that will take orders from Doctors for coding.

The new healthcare plan will actually also, despite the doomsday discussions, help our field since now everyone will have insurance and we wont have to take the hit of not getting paid.