Re:Medicine's Machine Learning Problem
by adolph on Friday January 08, 2021 @06:24PM
(#25691937)
Doctors and technologists of various stripes have been working on this since before the dawn of digital computers. Let's take height as an example. Let's look at metadata needed along with that data point: 1. When was it taken? 2. How was it taken? 3. Who took it? 4. What measurement system does "cm" refer to? 5. How does the concept of height relate to other clinical concepts?
The simple stuff like BMI, BSA, etc. have been calculated for a long time without anything fancy like an inference engine. The challenge is that the surface area of different calculations needed outstrip the supply of people who can interpret the clinical question, identify the source data and encode them. A better approach is needed and is what folks are working towards.
https://www.hl7.org/fhir/observation.html
https://www.hl7.org/fhir/observation-example-body-height.htm...
The simple stuff like BMI, BSA, etc. have been calculated for a long time without anything fancy like an inference engine. The challenge is that the surface area of different calculations needed outstrip the supply of people who can interpret the clinical question, identify the source data and encode them. A better approach is needed and is what folks are working towards.