

Agile Diagnosis (YC S11) Launches: Helping Doctors With Diagnosis - jonlee
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/03/agile-diagnosis-beta-launch/

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Homunculiheaded
Every time I go to the doctor with anything that isn't obvious I'm always
amazed that some basic ML tools aren't part of the standard practice.
Especially since the standard reaction now is "here take a bunch of expensive
tests, you won't be paying for most of them out of pocket so who cares!" We've
had the tools for decades now to at least say "given these symptoms, it's very
likely you X, Y or possibly Z". Additionally I'd be surprised if there weren't
some unexpected correlations between various features that most doctors would
miss.

Of course I guess I shouldn't be too surprised since medical records keeping
is still 30 years out of date. The fact that it's still common practice to
share medical records by filling out a consent form and having one office fax
paper forms to other is ridiculous.

I really hope we start to see disruption in this industry, so much potential
for not only cost savings but improved care.

~~~
zasz
I found this answer on Quora, by a medical student, to be quite illuminating
on why machine diagnosis isn't going to be any good, any time soon.
[http://www.quora.com/Why-is-machine-learning-not-more-
widely...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-machine-learning-not-more-widely-used-
for-medical-diagnosis)

~~~
rdl
Jae is awesome, but picked a particularly difficult case.

There are certain kinds of diagnosis which are hard for humans and easy for
computers, relatively, and some which are hard for computers and easy for
people. (well, more likely hard for one and impossible for the other).

Truly novel things, where you aggregate data across multiple sites, are IMO
the most amazing. Or, really rare but well defined conditions; doctors,
especially busy ones, have a much smaller in-memory working set than
computers.

I am very excited by machine diagnosis to augment humans. I don't think it
will replace humans for a long time, but making humans even 1% better saves
many lives and improves quality of life (and saves money).

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namityadav
This industry is not very open to change. But, Borna and Eric are very hard
working (and equally smart) guys -- just the kind of guys who can bring
disruption to the industry. I have very high hopes!

~~~
siavosh
I think it's great that there's an increase in attention to the medical space
from smart young folks. From my experience though, being smart and hard
working have very little to do with success in the medical-tech space. It
mostly has to do with 1) if you can show ROI with the least (can't emphasize
this enough) change to anyone's daily workflow, and 2) having a very very hard
working sales team

~~~
amper5and
Another critical aspect is to target the tech-savvy younger generation of
students and residents, which Agile is doing with their recent offer of free
lifetime access for participating medical schools. Almost all of us are using
tools like Uptodate on a daily basis on the floors. Agile's algorithmic
presentation of the same information makes a compelling case to use their
product. Early adoption by trainees can lead to future paradigm shifts in the
whole industry.

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rjurney
I have chronic nerve pain in my entire upper body. I _used_ to be a patient of
a world class university pain clinic. I left there for an individual pain
doctor because... I saw 4 doctors in 4 visits, none of whom knew my diagnosis,
read my file, etc.

If this flow chart was on the door of the patient room, my quality of care
would have been MUCH better.

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jedc
I find it fascinating that AgileDiagnosis went through YC, and then six months
later through RockHealth. Would any of the founders mind commenting on how/why
they chose this path?

~~~
borna
Both incubators have been crucial in their own ways. YC has an immense
experience and expertise in start-ups of every kind to draw from that helps us
tackle general start-up challenges decisively. Rock Health has a deep network
of health and medical partners and mentors for opportunities and challenges
unique to health-tech start-ups.

~~~
rdl
In retrospect, would you have done them in that order, or done Rock Health
first and YC second, or does it not matter?

I don't think anyone can touch YC for the core value proposition, but domain-
specific programs (for medical, enterprise, government, ...) might make some
sense, and I could see the value in something like StartX as a pre-YC while-
still-in-college thing.

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rwhitman
I hunted down a long HN comment thread where I proposed something similar
about 2 years ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1399953>

Pretty excited to see someone is executing on this

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EwanG
A space that IBM is hoping to own with it's "Watson for Healthcare"
initiative: <http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36989.wss>

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AaronWeissman
Amazing work JonLee and crew! Congratulations on the launch!

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bcjordan
<conspiracytheory> <http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html> was written before
YC S11. </conspiracytheory>

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danso
I'm sure a lot of people here have read Atul Gawande (of the New Yorker)
article about The Checklist, in which a simple list of steps before surgery,
such as "wash your hands", vastly reduced infections at hospitals. Yet the
checklist faced resistance, including from doctors who thought that having
such an obvious list was beneath them...even though even the smartest doctors
mess these steps up in the rush of an operation.
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande)

This is the mindset that any disruptive enterprise must face. It's not like in
the coding community, where spending a substantial amount of time writing
seemingly trivial and boring tests -- i.e. an automated checklist -- is
considered to be a necessary step in writing software.

