EP 11 Tom Fadial MD, Fractures/Nerveblock/Sutures.app

Written By DJ Apakama

Fadial.com hosts some of the most beautiful EM Apps on the net.

Episode 11 Show Notes

🚨 Can AI Replace Software Engineers? Lessons from SWE-Lancer and the Front Lines of Emergency Medicine – In this episode, Dr. DJ Apakama and Dr. Ethan Abbott discuss the recently released SWE-Lancer study, which tests whether AI models can successfully complete freelance software engineering tasks. Spoiler: not yet. They then bring in Dr. Tom Fadial, an emergency physician and prolific medical software developer, to explore what it means to build tools by clinicians, for clinicians.

🎙️ Featured Guest:

  • Dr. Tom Fadial – Emergency physician at West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, software developer, and interface designer.

    • Creator of well-known emergency medicine tools like Nerve Block App, Fractures, Suture, and ECG Stampede.

    • Advocate for physician-led tech innovation, with a focus on usability and workflow-first design.

    • Projects available at fadial.com

🧠 Key Topics:
✅ SWE-Lancer Study Discussion – Can LLMs like Claude 3.5 or GPT-4 replace human software engineers? Not yet. But they’re improving.
✅ Human-AI Collaboration – The future of software development is AI-assisted, not AI-only.
✅ Clinician-Built Tools – How Dr. Fadial identifies gaps in emergency medicine and builds apps that solve real pain points.
✅ Barriers to Clinical Tool Building – Why more doctors don’t build tools—and why they should.
✅ Design Philosophy – The importance of high-yield, minimalist interfaces tailored to the pace of EM.
✅ The Future of Physician-Developers – Encouraging clinicians to develop their own software, from scratch or using LLMs.

📄 Paper Discussed:
📰 SWE-Lancer: Can Frontier LLMs Earn $1 Million from Real-World Freelance Software Engineering? (Preprint, Feb 2025)
🔗 Read the paper

🔍 Why it Matters:
This episode offers a reality check on AI’s capabilities and an inspiring look at how emergency physicians like Dr. Fadial are building practical tools to improve care. Whether you’re an engineer, doctor, or LLM enthusiast, this one’s for you.

🎧 Listen now and learn how software engineering, emergency medicine, and AI are converging—led by the people on the ground.

🔗 Dr. Fadial’s Projects: fadial.com
🔗 SWE-Lancer Paper: arXiv link

DJ Apakama
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EP10 Dr. Travis Zack MD PhD and Varun Mangalick BS, Open Evidence