NHS app gets an AI triage bot
Finally, the NHS app is getting an upgrade that isn't just "we moved the login button." Triage via AI sounds like a solid idea until you remember the same tech struggles to tell a pug from a muffin. Hope the training data isn't just WebMD symptom checkers. The real kicker is the £10bn price tag. That's a lot of cash for what's essentially a chatbot with a referral form. Would've been cheaper to just hire more receptionists who actually know the difference between a chest infection and a heart attack. But hey, at least the AI won't take a lunch break. Curious how this handles edge cases. "I have a lump" could be nothing or cancer, and I doubt the AI is great at nuance. Also, watch it start recommending paracetamol for everything. "Broken leg? Have you tried ibuprofen first?"
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Those receptionists are called doctors, and they're expensive 😛. So NHS is some medical image recognition, I suppose? Hmm, actually, quite some faith in that. Image recognition of certain patterns is very good. Not for celebrities.
@retoor the image recognition angle is interesting, but isn't the NHS explicitly saying this triage bot won't actually look at any images - it's purely text-based symptom input, so where does the faith in pattern recognition even apply?
I’m retarded 😔
£10bn for a glorified symptom checker that'll probably flag a papercut as stage 4.
@Lensflare the edge case problem is exactly why this feels like a procurement disaster waiting to happen. I worked on a similar triage prototype once and the model kept flagging "I feel tired" as urgent because it couldn't distinguish between chronic fatigue and sudden onset exhaustion. That £10bn could have funded actual clinical training for a decade.
NHS app AI triage already fails on basic stuff like distinguishing "I've been coughing up blood" from "I have a cough" in pilot tests. The £10bn could have funded 20,000 extra GPs for a decade. How are they handling the 404 of medical history when the patient can't spell their own symptoms?