Wider screening isn't great. Essentially, people with medical problems self-select pretty alright already, and wide early-screening initiatives for most cancers introduces as much or more false positives (that persist through screening!) than actual cases of cancer it catches - and moreover, it's not even clear that the early screening is effective - the false negative rate is high enough that the overall incidence of advanced cancer is unchanged even with early screening. (Bleyer and Welch, NEJM, 2012)
Basically, we need better screening, not more screening at our current levels, and it's not clear whether watson can provide that.
Precisely - since mammography is the standard "counterintuitive Bayes rule" primer, I remembered those numbers don't support wider screening.
I'm not discounting the possibility of a useful role for Watson in wider screening, but it's not clear to me where it would be. If it happens after any kind of extensive examination, doctor-hours are being committed regardless and there's little gain. If it happens at a population-level screen like mammograms and colonoscopies, "almost as good as oncologists" isn't enough to add any value.
https://canadiantaskforce.ca/tools-resources/breast-cancer-2...
Wider screening isn't great. Essentially, people with medical problems self-select pretty alright already, and wide early-screening initiatives for most cancers introduces as much or more false positives (that persist through screening!) than actual cases of cancer it catches - and moreover, it's not even clear that the early screening is effective - the false negative rate is high enough that the overall incidence of advanced cancer is unchanged even with early screening. (Bleyer and Welch, NEJM, 2012)
Basically, we need better screening, not more screening at our current levels, and it's not clear whether watson can provide that.