Obviously, no idea why your doc was using Wikipedia so much, but in general the fair baseline to compare isn't Wikipedia, it's mature, professionally reviewed material like Uptodate, Dynamed, AMBOSS, etc that do have clinical decision support tools and purpose built calculators and references. Of course they're all working on GenAI stuff. (Not to mention professional wikis like LIFTL, emcrit, IBCC).
An issue with these products is access and expense (wealthy institutions easily have access, poorer ones do not), but that seems like a problem that is no better with the new fangled tech.
GIGO is a bigger problem. The current state of tech cannot overcome a shitty history and physical, or outright missing data/tests due to factors unrelated to clinical decision making. I surmise that is a bigger factor than the incremental conveniences of RAG, but I could very well be full of crap.
“wealthy institutions easily have access, poorer ones do not),”
Everything you said is agreeable except that statement. The institution’s wealth doesn’t trickle down to the docs, who pay out of pocket for many of these tools.
Not sure how this is disagreeable it’s just relaying an easily verifiable fact. In the US any decent academic affiliated institution or well funded private one will have institutional memberships to one or more of these products. I’ve never paid out of pocket for either UpToDate or Dynamed, for instance, but obviously not everyone has that benefit, especially on a global level.
> The institution’s wealth doesn’t trickle down to the docs
As a general statement that’s just nonsense. Richer institutions provide better equipment for one, and will often pay for personal equipment memberships like POCUS (and that tends to be more segmented to the top institutions), training, and of course expenses for conferences.
If it isn’t clear by POCUS “personal equipment memberships” I mean portable per user licensed devices like the Butterfly or Clarius (have you heard of them?) not the trusty biohazard in the supply room. Those are very much not standard of care since most make do without it and I question how with the times you are if you think I was referring to ultrasound in general.
Your anecdote doesn’t change the fact that the access to costly resources is correlated with the finances of both the locale and the organizations. To argue otherwise is detachment from reality. And I’m going to wager that the “poorer” system in your story was still quite wealthy in absolute terms.
> Those funds are sometime allotted as part as a compensation package, but it's just that-- an employment benefit that offsets what they have to pay you.
There’s a nugget of truth here but this is overall a gross oversimplification.
You don’t seem well and I’m sorry about your personal axe to grind with your institution but it’s not pertinent to the topic at hand.
An issue with these products is access and expense (wealthy institutions easily have access, poorer ones do not), but that seems like a problem that is no better with the new fangled tech.
GIGO is a bigger problem. The current state of tech cannot overcome a shitty history and physical, or outright missing data/tests due to factors unrelated to clinical decision making. I surmise that is a bigger factor than the incremental conveniences of RAG, but I could very well be full of crap.