HN user

thomasfedb

1,338 karma

Doctor, medical researcher, and software engineer. Pronouns they/them.

https://drake-brockman.id.au/

Posts3
Comments431
View on HN

It is my (unpopular I suspect) opinion that the contents of medical or other academic journals is not intended for consumption by the “interested public” as much as I can understand the desire to do so.

That’s not the same as saying that the interested public shouldn’t be able to learn about these things, but I do think they will often need assistance from those who are trained to read and discriminate this content.

And yes, journals should also do better, and peer review should be high quality and paid (you get, ultimately, what you pay for…)

As a clinician-academic who published in The Lancet during medical school, I think this goes a bit far. Unfortunately student doctors are encouraged to publish whether or not they actually have an interest in research… but that shouldn’t discount the work of those who are genuinely engaged.

But certainly we should always approach the literature critically, including the author list, journal of publication and its peer-review practices, and the methods.

If it was actually 23mins, and not modifiable, then a myriad of important professions would be completely unviable (e.g. medicine). That is to say, it seems doubtful that the impact of interruptions can be meaningfully summarised in a single figure.

I wrote my joint med-CS honours (1 year research thing we have in Aus) thesis in Word. My med supervisor was happy with it. CS supervised insisted I reformat it in LaTeX as he couldn't stand the typesetting.

Honestly I don't disagree with him, it looked far better in 'TeX. But that's probably a learnt preference.

In essence, it's culture.

$100 Hamburger 1 year ago

We no longer require a bun crisis to lodge this flight plan. Plenty of flights are made to Rotto for a sausage roll, any time of the year.

I would argue against “entire”. As an academic I (and I believe many of my colleagues also) take much pride in what we write - both the content and the prose itself.

I find the distinction you draw between weights and a program interesting - partially the idea that one is a “static file” and the other isn’t.

What makes a file non-static (dynamic?) other than +x?

Both are instructions about how to perform a computation. Both require other software/hardware/microcode to run. In general, the stack is tall!

Even so, I do agree that “a bunch of matrices” feels different to “a bunch of instructions” - although arguably the former may be closer in architecture to the greatest computing machine we know (the brain) than the latter.

</armchair>

Arguably the issue in your friend’s case is providing the patient with a document that’s not designed for them. Radiology reports are written with a particular audience in mind.

They are also written with a particular medicolegal perspective, which the intended audience will appreciate.

I often give my patients copies of their results/reports, which gives me an opportunity to explain them.

If we are going to send reports to patients directly, maybe they need to be written differently? Who should pay for that different report to be written/checked?

We already have AI tools for prioritising the order some tests are processed in (e.g. which X-Rays the radiologist looks at first). But once the report is written the author has a responsibility to ensure any urgent result is escalated. As a requester (I order tests), if I result needs urgent action within days or less, I expect a phone call to myself or another doctor in the practice.

Generally yes.

Sometimes what’s “normal” is highly dependant on other factors. In that case you might get a table or other comparative information provided.

That said, some results are still concerning if they’re “high-normal” or “low-normal”, and some results are not that worrying even if they’re slightly abnormal.

These systems likely vary around the world, this is an Australian perspective.

When blood works or whatever exam results are available they should go through some kind of automated system that can flag critical situations like this, without waiting for a doctor.

We already have this. Based on either individual results or how results relate to each other.

Labs will detect critical results and then a range of things happen:

- a scientist may repeat or check the result if the value is extreme, to ensure it isn’t an error

- a scientist may alert a pathologist to the result immediately

- a scientist or pathologist may contact the referring doctor/hospital by phone to provide the result immediately

- in some cases, the lab will contact the patient directly (if they need to go directly to hospital for example)

This also gets done with radiology.

This then gets followed by the official report in hours to days depending on how much confirmation is required.

Though Photopea is already an online Photoshop clone and sounds a bit similar?

(It’s also pretty decent. My usual go to for stuff I can’t justify spinning up an Adobe VM for…)

I agree. Have always felt that USDS/18F are best in class examples of tech innovation being brought to perhaps slightly tech-backwards areas of government, and doing the interpersonal work to bring other agencies along as well.

The UK’s Government Digital Service is similar. They’ve got some good examples of doing unglamorous but impactful work -e.g. replacing dozens of different payment processing systems with one quality one, the same thing for sending physical letters, etc.

Sometimes changes are required to meet packaging guidelines, sometimes you can get exemptions. Of course users often don’t realise who’s done what.

I suppose my advice to upstream would be to direct the end user to the Fedora bug tracker, where the bug can land in my queue. Or advise the user to install from a different source.

The upstream that I’ve dealt with have been kind enough to lodge a bug themselves on the package I look after, which is also an option, and much appreciated.

That’s a poor faith comment.

I’m a Fedora packager (not for this package). Like many others I have an unrelated day job.

If there’s an upstream complaint I might get to it this weekend, maybe next. If I’m busy for a few weeks that doesn’t make me stupid.

Have had my share of “discussions” with upstream who want the latest version packaged when this might not be completely in line with our guidelines. Not an uncommon issue.