Thoughts After Seeing the 'AI-Assisted Reading' Note on My Health Checkup Report
This year's checkup report had a note saying "AI-assisted reading." It was for the chest X-ray, and it explicitly stated that a human had done the final review.
I think it's a good direction technologically, but I'm a bit concerned about how patients will take it when there's a false positive. How far can "the AI said so" really go?
If there are any medical professionals here, I'd be curious what the atmosphere is like on the ground.
7 answers
I agree, the AI interpretation wording is a bit odd when you first see it lol
I'm a radiologic technologist, and chest X-ray AI really does produce a lot of false positives. Especially for TB screening, the threshold is lowered to boost sensitivity, so it often flags hilar shadows or areas where ribs overlap as lesions. That's why reports get an 'AI-assisted' tag, and a human does the final read. But the problem is that in some hospitals, that 'human final check' is just a formality. When daily read volumes pile up, there are cases where people just copy-paste the AI result as is, so workflow seems more important than the system.
Well, that's a bit... People worry about AI false positives, but why isn't the human misdiagnosis rate taken into account? If anything, if AI serves as a second pair of eyes, isn't reducing missed cases the real benefit? The problem isn't so much a patient saying "But the AI said so"—it's the attitude of medical staff trying to shift responsibility onto that.
But if that wording gets included, where does liability land? Is it the hospital or the manufacturer? If a false positive leads to a few extra tests and just heightens patient anxiety, who foots the bill?
Got a source? Which hospital's results are these? Most general hospitals these days would have it by now, I'd think.
From a patient’s perspective, “The AI said so” is genuinely terrifying lol. Whether it’s reading assistance or whatever, if the person who gives the final sign-off is the one responsible, then it’s fine—but if there’s just a phrase on the report with no explanation, it only makes the anxiety worse. If the doctor said, “The AI saw it this way, but in my view it’s fine,” there’d be no problem at all, but they don’t do that.
The problem is that they only emphasize 'AI interpretation' without talking about sensitivity and specificity. Screening support is inherently biased toward not missing cases, so it accepts over-detection, and it should be explained to patients that confirmation afterward is up to humans. But in reality, there’s no time for that explanation, so they just slap on some wording. Ultimately, it seems to be a matter of regulation and reimbursement, not a technology problem.