One of the main problems, I think, with outsourcing from the US is that what it is really doing is changing where the research and development money will be spent. All the corporate research institutes going up in India and China, WITH the factories there for real developmental interaction, means that the focus of new developments will be there, not in the US and the U.S. is becoming a hollow society in terms of technical expertise combined with real world issues. Of course this is not 100% or even 50%, but even a 10% swing means that the U.S. is much less resiliant. I think this is inevitable.

“Eventually, Indian doctors will be able to do the preliminary diagnoses that are a big part of radiology.”

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! (To quote BTO. )

I think it was an issue or two ago in MIT’s Technology Review that talked about putting 50,000 cases of breast cancer x-rays into a massive database. Eventually, they hope to get *millions* of cases into the database. It’s called a “medical grid” (as in electrical grid).

They will also tie those x-rays to patient therapies used (e.g., surgeries, drugs) and patient outcomes.

With the database completed, computer programs can be written to relate x-rays to therapies used, and patient outcomes.

In other words, radiologists themselves can be replaced by computer programs that have “looked” at literally tens of thousands–if not millions–of x-rays, and can relate the results not only to appropriate therapies, but likely outcomes.

And THEN…they will start putting in the *DNA* of each patient, to relate that to X-rays, treatments, and outcomes.

The power of the whole thing is simply mind-boggling. Rather than having to rely exclusively on the patient’s oncologist and radiologist, the patient–probably through the oncologist–will have access to a set of computers that eventually have perfect memory of literally millions of cases of breast cancer. (And in 20 years, it could be hundreds of millions of cases of breast cancer.)

The only way this can happen is because of the mind boggling decrease in the cost of computer power. Say each x-ray, scanned in very fine detail, contains 20 megabytes of information. (I’m just guessing; anyone knowledgeable feel free to correct me.) Let’s say 10 x-rays per person (I have no idea). That’s 200 meg per patient. Now, 50,000 patient: that’s 10,000 gigabytes of data. Well, even 20 years ago, that would be a hundred-million-dollar proposition. But today, at 50 cents a gig, it’s only $5,000!

Amazing. And this power will be available *anywhere in the world*…from the U.S. to India, to Botswana and Mongolia. The X-rays simply get uploaded into the grid (the database), and out comes information on the ~100 or ~1000 most similar cases, with treatments and outcomes.

That’s part of why I’m very confident that world economic growth will continue to accelerate as the 21st century progresses:

http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2005/11/why_economic_gr.html

P.S. I guessed about 200 meg per patient. That appears to be an excellent swag. Through the miracle of Google:

http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v46/n34/digital-mam.html

…the answer apparently is approximately 160 meg per patient.

P.P.S. I think that Internet article may be on the exact same project as described in the MIT Technology Review article.