Medical diagnoses in the hands of computers

People depend on doctors to provide reliable health care. Unfortunately, many individuals across New York and the rest of the United States are faced with misdiagnoses every year. This leads to patients undergoing sometimes expensive and dangerous treatments that do them no good.

Experts argue that the problem now often involves too much information. Doctors today have a much more comprehensive amount of data concerning the human body than ever before. There is also a staggering amount of data from patient and hospital records. This ends up being far too much information for a single human doctor to remember or make use of. This massive set of information has led to the increasing use of specialists who sometimes increase the likelihood of misdiagnoses.

Technology innovators are looking for better ways to solve this problem. Many experts are increasingly confident that advanced computer programs will begin to take over the role of diagnosis. These programs will be able to process a much larger volume of information much faster, and they will be more likely to provide an accurate diagnosis. A single human doctor can then step in to translate this information for the patient and handle direct interaction. Experts believe this synergy between human and machine will revolutionize health care and solve a costly problem in modern medicine.

In the meantime, patients everywhere still have to contend with the possibility of a doctor's failure to diagnose an illness. If a misdiagnosis causes harm, then a person has the right to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against the physician responsible. This lawsuit may reclaim money in the form of damages to compensate the patient for their loss.