Since 2016, Adam Yala, a University of California, Berkeley computer scientist, has listened intently, if skeptically, to forecasts by medical software makers that radiologists were nearing extinction. Artificial intelligence, the thinking went, was about to take their jobs.
With radiologists still in high demand a decade later, Yala is now launching a company out of Berkeley that is developing an AI model to detect hundreds of conditions automatically and write detailed clinical reports on its findings. Even with this more powerful technology at hand, his conclusion about the future of radiologists is unchanged.
“I don’t think we’re even close to having too many radiologists,” Yala said, adding that his company is built around a more modest goal: “How do we help to make it better to be a radiologist next year than it is to be a radiologist this year?”
AI startup aims to diagnose hundreds of conditions on medical images
