Its better to be the oracle with the Tea Leaves garnering the accompanying salaries and status.
>> Perhaps some day, the medical field will experience the same boom in open source and inexpensive services. That day ain't tomorrow.
You're right it's today. There's a bunch of HIPPA compliant, reasonably priced SaaS's available to do just this. Google it.
The obstacle lies in getting medical professionals to give their status, cush jobs, and money over to a machine for the betterment of patients and the field, which is going to be a hard won battle.
I for one can't wait until a nurse with good beside manner takes my samples and symptoms, sends them to a lab/records them in an EHR, and a machine with zettabytes of data and years of machine learning diagnosis me with more accuracy than a human ever could imagine.
You don't need to trust, but only use a little logic. Would a doctor prefer to reduce expenses and increase profits? Of course there's some interest in preserving status quo, but as that "Cult of the Root Cause" [0] article pointed out, there can be many system dynamics working simultaneously.
Just consider all the conversations people have about Google. Life is just so much better with Google Search and YouTube -- learning things is so easy now. Yet, there are some nagging doubts about what we gave up to have that access to information.
Perhaps some day, the medical field will experience the same boom in open source and inexpensive services. That day ain't tomorrow.