WILL ENGINEERS REPLACE DOCTORS? 1

[uppili11]

WOULD LIKE TO INITIATE A NEW INTERESTING THREAD:

WILL ENGINEERS REPLACE DOCTORS IN FUTURE???

TECHNICALLY EVERY PART OF THE HUMAN BEING VIZ KIDNEY OR
HEART OR ANY PART CAN BE MECHANIZED AND MADE TO FUNCTION
EXTERNALLY.(WHO KNOWS-MAY BE IN ANOTHER 20 YEARS)AND ALL DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE IS DONE BY EQUIPEMENTS AND THE DOCTORS USE THEIR EXPERIENCE CUM COMMON SENSE TO DECIDE ON FURTHER COURSE OF ACTION.STRICTLY SPEAKING GONE ARE THE OLD DAYS WHERE THE DOCTOR USES ONLY HIS EXPERIENCE TO TREAT PATIENTS.
CAN WE CONCLUDE THE DOCTORS CAN BE DISPENSED WITH IN THE YEARS TO COME WITH TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND COMPUTING??

 

[rbcoulter]

No. Doctors, unlike most engineers, control their profession and are licensed to practice by the states. DOCTORS, not engineers, prescribe treatment and are therefore the "gatekeepers" to treatment on patients.
It is more likely that doctors will be more like engineers in the future instead of the other way around.

 

[PSE]

So the first BORG are born/created? I think that Doctors will remain such but they will have an ever increasing array of technologies to assist them in making a diagnosis. The final decision on a treatment course will still depend upon the physician. Can you envision a machine taking the hippocratic oath?

 

[uppili11]

Of course the decision of treatment lies with doctor.But please remember even today the entire diagnosis is helped by equipments like CTC scan,x ray etc etc which clearly says what the problem is.The doctor has to decide on the options before him whetehr to make a surgery or provide medicine or depending on the helath condition of the patient leave it as it is.So it is a set of decision matrix which can be computerised over a period of time based on several cases/several past histories with a formal approval of the doctor thereby much simplifying the issue which in my opinion can definetely happen in future.And with the technological advances today one can expect a set of machines which can do the function of a kidney or heart etc.
Nobody imagined of cloning earlier which is a reality now

 

[quark]

hmmm...Just heard the first ever cloned sheep had a premature death with multiple ailments.One simple truth is Nature finds its own ways

 

[jproj]

Many doctors ARE engineers (at least by their BS degree). Medical schools look highly on engineering degrees. It is much easier for an engineer with a 3.0 GPA to get into med school than a liberal arts major with the same (or even higher) GPA (of course, there are other considerations).

jproj

 

[TheBlacksmith]

Very blurry. An engineer can be described as someone who uses applied science - usually meaning physic, chemistry or electricity/electronics. Doctors apply their knowledge of biology. As we move forward knowledge of both biology and medicine - how it is supposed to work, aka why doesn't it work and engineering, devising manmade substitutions that will replace ailing body parts will demand both disciplines. I think the doctor and the engineer will end up working more closely side by side, rather than either one replacing the other.

Blacksmith

 

[JeffdlS]

Uppili11,

I remember hearing back in my college days that expert systems would be used instead of doctors in the future. However, that has yet to come to fruition. And why is that? The cynic would say that the doctors don't want to share their information which could be placed in an expert system since it could replace them. But I think the reality is this (which some people have already touched on): the computer - or whatever mechanism you use - can diagnose a certain problem but it cannot provide the best treatment for that particular patient. It would have to know all possible inter-reactions with medications, complications of surgeries, etc. This is really too much for any current machines to handle. So I don't think we'll be seeing engineering taking the place of doctors.

JeffdlS

 

[etch]

To replay to the dolly the sheep syndrom that it died early of ailments, the actual truth is the sheep was aged 6, very ew studies have been done on the age and ailmetns of sheep.

Most sheep get carted off to the big green field in the sky aged no older than 3. Dolly was 6 and suffered from arthitis, which again is not uncommon in older sheep, nor is any of the other ailments that she suffered from.
We have got to remember just cause we can clone animals does not mean we cure all the ailments associated with it.

 

[ProEpro]

Jproj
Is was going to say the same thing. I went to school with several engineers that went on to become doctors. The engineers were allways frustrated talking to their friends in traditional premed programs because the premeds had it so easy. ProEpro

http://www.whitelightdesign.com

 

[BobPE]

ProEpro:

I have a friend that is a heart surgeon and one that is a brain surgeon, both pre med. I think the only thing they learned in the first 4 years was how to drink heavily, play golf, and cheat. I think a lot of people have no clue what a hell it is to get through a 4 year engineering program.

just my 2 cents worth....

BobPE

 

[Maui]

Does the method that most doctors employ to determine the nature of an illness and to prescribe medication concern anyone else? In most of my interactions with physicians, they examine you for at most 10 minutes, then write a prescription and tell you to come back in two weeks. If the medication doesn't work, then they'll prescribe something else. It seems to me that they usually don't know what you have, and they select a drug that's known to combat a variety of illnesses. And even if the infection is viral, they sometimes perscribe antibiotics just to make the patient feel a little better by reducing the severity of their symptoms. This has the unfortunate side effect of making certain viruses resistent to many of these wonder drugs. Ear infections in children are a good example of this in the United States. If an engineer attempted to use this type of shotgun approach to resolve design or structural problems, there would be chaos. Isn't the purpose of a diagnosis to find out what the person actually has?

 

[GregLocock]

That's all a bit philosophical. My answer would be that a doctor's job is to heal you. Since the body is very capable of doing this most of the time he can usually afford to play a waiting game, and just suppress unpleasant symptoms, and correct any immediately obvious 'mechanical' problems (by holding broken bones in the right position, or sewing up any leaky bits).

Unfortunately bridges, cars and electronic chips don't get better by themselves, so we have to fix them directly.




Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[Qshake]

Greg,

an interesting thought to your post is that our industry is now starting to see "Health Monitoring" as a way to increase the longevity of a structure through preventative measures. Obviously, the moniker came by way of the health industry and it is very similar but as you noted structures can't heal themselves so engineers need a direct approach/involvement.

What if twenty years from now a database based on data compiled with health monitoring is used to determine what "ailments" a structure may have suffered due to settling, extreme event forces, erection practice etc and engineers are now, based on statistical data, able to prescribe a fix that may or may not fix what may or may not be wrong with a structure?