Reading a chest radiograph for tuberculosis · Contested (since 2021)

In March 2021 the World Health Organization recommended computer aided detection software as an alternative to human reading of digital chest radiographs, for tuberculosis screening and triage in people aged 15 and over.

This is the first time the organisation named software as a substitute for a reader rather than a help to one, and it matters most where there is no radiologist within reach. The recommendation is conditional, limited to plain digital chest images in adults, and restricted to products shown by outside evaluation to perform at least as well as those the guideline panel examined in 2020. Software marks a chest as suspect and nothing more. Confirmation needs a bacteriological test, and the six months of treatment that follow, in a household, with side effects and interruptions, needs a person. The reading is being handed over in the places where nobody was reading.