Healthcare resources are very limited, you'd overwhelm it with lots of "yeah that's a defect, but 40% have it", things that would go away on its own, false positives, things that do not require urgent intervention, 10x increase of hypochondriacs and health deterioration caused by anxiety

You'd have a system where every resource is allocated for diagnostics, but no medical staff to treat it

Also a significant part of population avoids screening even if they are not required to paid anything from their pocket

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rlt 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe it's not a coincidence an AI company is building this thing...

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moffkalast 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah I'm wondering where exactly people think we'd find the millions of additional MRI machines and technicians to run them to make this somehow viable, as if the current ones are not pretty much at 100% capacity at all times.

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dmurray 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

MRI machines cost in the six figures [0], last 10+ years and could reasonably do thousands of full-body scans a year. That's basically free by healthcare standards. Rent for the room to put it in would cost more in most cities.

MRI operators are specially trained technicians, because these are complicated machines. But like, semi trucks and photocopiers are fantastically complicated machines, and we seem to be able to keep a pipeline of people trained to operate and maintain them.

So I don't think there's an economic blocker for giving everyone a full-body MRI scan every year or two.

[0] https://www.blockimaging.com/bid/92623/mri-machine-cost-and-...

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luesterklemme 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What are you reasonably expecting to find in a full body MRI? Besides the notion that a "full body MRI" is not a procedure that is routinely done anyway and lasts upwards of an hour. It's not the scanner that is the limiting economic factor.

	▲	dmurray 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right. I'm replying to the commentator who questioned how we could possibly purchase and staff enough MRI machines to give people regular full body scans. I'm saying there's no question that would be economically viable. The reason we don't and shouldn't do it is that it wouldn't be medically valuable, even compared to other cheap interventions.

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ben_w 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The website is calling for their full-body MRI-replacing ultrasonic scanners to be so cheap they're part of a spa session.

TBH, this is already a red flag for me, like so many other "tech bro invents X" stories, though I am also aware of stories were "company realises Y is overpriced in medical purchases, makes Y cheaper, finds all hospitals think it is a scam and refuse to buy unless they raise prices".

	▲	zarzavat 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Conventional ultrasound scanners are already cheap. Why can't a big ultrasound scanner be cheap too? What makes MRI machines expensive is that they are big helium-cooled superconducting magnets that have to be continuously kept at a few Kelvin.

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mommys_little 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's the real problem! That healthcare costs are a goldmine for Big Pharma instead of being a cheap and widely available service. And, as someone said before, the huge amount of data it produces, would decrease the rate of false positives to zero in no time! And your arguments about hypochondriacs are very similar to those that were once given against teaching reading to all people!

	▲	nxobject 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> That's the real problem! That healthcare costs are a goldmine for Big Pharma instead of being a cheap and widely available service. I thought we were railing against Big Hospital/Big Insurance here? They'd love a cheap diagnostic.
	▲	3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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