Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Computers to Diagnose Injuries and Sickness

Every year there are many mistakes made by physicians for the diagnosis of a patient's illness. In surgery, if this error is made the consequences can be extremely fatal. Making mistakes but limiting them to a small number is part of being a physician according to Atul Gawande in his book Complications. Inaccurate diagnosis is a problem that should be conquered by the availability of computers.

In his book Gawande states there are new machines made for anesthesiologists for the purpose of reducing an error that cause people to die due to an excess of amount of anesthesia. The error was brought out by two different types of anesthesia machines that were placed in a hospital. One machine contained a dial that countered the dial of the other machine meaning the dials were inconsistent in the way they distributed anesthesia. This was one issue in the technology in a hospital that caused many deaths To prevent this the dials on the anesthesia machines became consistent.

Personal opinion and learned knowledge is how physicians diagnose patients who complain about their body. Like a car our body contains various systems that work together to form a well oiled machine. The modern day mechanic diagnoses the problems of a system by syncing it to a computer. If this can be done to a car then why can't it be done to the human body? A bridge between our biological body and an electrical interface needs to be built so solutions like this one can be created.

With the consistency of machines, and the a perfection in practice error can be limited in medicine. Today, physicians and surgeons obtain their practice on actual patients who are underprivileged in their payment methods. Anesthesiologists can practice their jobs in computer simulators where they can be presented a number of different situations that can come across them in the field. Simulations like this where computers are involved is one way computers can make a dramatic impact of medicine.

Like problems experienced by anesthesiologists, doctors in every field experience problems in their daily jobs. Computer simulation to sharpen the skills of various physicians should have a more prominent role in the world of errors. The fact that residents train on actual patients to gain experience is not safe for either the patient or the resident's job security. A company that specializes in software to diagnose illness by scrutinizing the variables of the human body would be the perfect way to solidify accuracy in a diagnosis.

No comments:

Post a Comment