(My spouse was an ultrasound tech for many years.)
The problem with an example like ultrasound is that it's not a passive modality - you don't just take a sweep and then analyze it later. The tech is taking shots and adjusting as they go along to see things better in real time. There's all sorts of potential stuff in way often bowel and bones and you have to work around all that to see what you need to.
A lot of the job is actively analyzing what you're seeing while you're scanning and then going for better shots of the things you see, and having the experience and expertise to get the shots is the same skills required to analyze the images to know what shots to get. It's not just a matter of waving a wand around and then having the rad look at it later.
This is one of the many places where computer people simplify other professions.
Legally yes, the rad is the one interpreting it, but it's a very active process by the technologist. The ultrasound tech is actively interpreting the scans as they do them, and then using the wand to chase down what they notice to get better shots of things. If they don't see something the rad won't either, so you need that expertise there to identify things that don't look right, it's very real time and you can't do it post hoc.
Did anyone suggest robots do ultrasounds? Who is simplifying it? Having literally just done one: the tech came in, basically said nothing and took a bunch of pictures and then Doc came in and interpreted the results.
People are suggesting that AI interprets the images, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the process, because the tech is making choices while taking the pictures of what the images should be of. You can't wait until the pictures are taken and given to the rad before the interpretation can begin, it has to be happening during the whole process. The question then is what is the place of the AI in that process? What is it automating?
At my spouse's primary clinic the techs did debrief the rads in person, and at other sites they include notes with the images, so they do get supplementary information from the techs. I suppose AI would make the rads superfluous because between the tech and the AI they don't have anything to do, but the majority of the effort will remain, and I still wouldn't trust it giving AI's predilection for just making things up when there's missing information.
The problem with an example like ultrasound is that it's not a passive modality - you don't just take a sweep and then analyze it later. The tech is taking shots and adjusting as they go along to see things better in real time. There's all sorts of potential stuff in way often bowel and bones and you have to work around all that to see what you need to.
A lot of the job is actively analyzing what you're seeing while you're scanning and then going for better shots of the things you see, and having the experience and expertise to get the shots is the same skills required to analyze the images to know what shots to get. It's not just a matter of waving a wand around and then having the rad look at it later.