Let us get back to the art of healing, depend less on
evidence-based medicine, guideline and algorithms.
Today I was reading the last chapter of the book “T he
pattern on the stone” authored by W Daniel Hillis.
This is an old book which is written in simple language so
that somebody who is interested in understanding how computers work at the
basic level can read this book and understand the simple logic on which all
these complex software and hardware systems dependent on.
On page 147 of this book while talking about evolutionary
software he writes
“the fact that the walled software cannot always be
understood makes some people nervous about using it in real applications, but I
think this nervousness is founded on false assumptions. One of the assumption
is that engineered systems are always well understood, but this is true only of
the relatively simple systems. As noted, no single person completely
understands a complex operating system. The second file assumption is that
systems are less stressed was the they cannot be explained. Given the choice of
flying in an airplane operated by an engineered computer program or one flown
by a human pilot I would pick the human pilot. And I would do so even though I
don’t understand how the human pilot works. I prefer to put my faith in the
process that produced the pilot. As with the sorting programs, I know that a
pilot is descended from a long line of survivors. If the safety of the airplane
dependent on sorting numbers correctly, I would rather depend on an evolved sorting
program than on one written by a team of programmers”
I think this is the best answer on why we need to go back to
the art of healing and depend less on evidence-based medicine, guidelines and
medical algorithms.
I think this will produce a significant reduction in medical
costs and also make people understand that all systems are not explainable and
not all results are as expected, so that the amount of malpractice litigation
is reduced.
No comments:
Post a Comment