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Ask HN: Why we cannnot have periodic automated health check?

6 points by drmacak ↗ HN
Somehow even HN is full of stories about cancer, but lately I also noticed quite high amount of cancer cases of people I know. The biggest problem usualy is the detection, as early stages are curable than later. Every time my questions is, if it actually would not be feasible to have fully automated health check, lets say once per year. I imagine it in way that you may provide you urin, blood sample, maybe some questionare and then go thru the MRI or CT (which as it is XRAY can be harmful too often?). But all the data would be analyzed by DPNN. I assume after some time of doing this with large amount of people and some feedback when they got issues, you could train the network to see if something is going on in advance. If it would be highly automated and well organized it migth take just hour or so. Without waiting and all the other stuff that makes it so hard to get examined.

5 comments

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open-source-ux
Regular health checks offered to all people (for free) at different times in their life is a good idea.

However, there is a widespread belief that health checkups are more important in later life (e.g. after age 40) because many conditions are more likely to develop in later years.

I like the idea of general health checks available to all regardless of age, but I don't know what this means in terms of cost (presumably high).

In the UK, the NHS (National Health Service) offers a free health check to anyone aged 40 to 75 (which can be re-taken every 5 years):

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/nhs-health-check/

DanBC
> The biggest problem usualy is the detection, as early stages are curable than later.

Does early detection lead to fewer deaths overall? For many types of cancer it doesn't.

2rsf
and also leads to many false positives that in turn leads to treatments with many side effects or even dangers
cosmodisk
In my country, we have something called 'medical comission'. Anyone who wants to get a job needs to do it: the employer has to write down the risk factors, such as weight lifting, work at height, climbing, looking at the screen all day,etc. They are standartised categories. Then, the employee goes to their GP and potentially other specialists to establish whether your health is suitable for the job. For instance, my dad arrangend me a job at a local bakery during the summer after school but I failed the medical part as I've got asthma and one of the risk factors was dust in the environment. Once employed, you then have to do it once a year.

This system has its pros and cons but I believe 12 month mandatory checks could pick many things if that would be rolled out nationwide.

alejo
I think this company is onto something related with what you are looking for:

https://basishealth.io

They had a post here a few months ago. I entered the early access but have yet to use the device and app so I cannot review them