Elusive Treasure Hunt | Dr. Sumer Sethi | TEDxAIIMSNewDelhi youtu.be/ZkVikPuJzs8 via @YouTube

"AI will replace radiologists." So why did the toppers pick it? Every radiologist my age has heard it at least once: "AI will replace you." Among doctors in their 40s and 50s, it is the worry I hear most often. Now look at what 28,000 young doctors just did in NEET PG 2026 Round 1 The numbers Radiology opened at rank 7. Of the top 100 who took a seat, 28 chose Radiology. Of the top 1,000, 299 did. Half of all Open MD Radiology seats in the All India Quota went within rank 635. The last one closed at 3,058, the tightest of any major branch. Within the top 10,000, 1,154 seats went to Radiology. Half of those were DNB or diploma. Toppers were willing to take any route in. The NBEMS Radiology diploma opened at 1,534 and closed at 15,479, ahead of MD seats in six other branches. 352 doctors took Radiology in deemed universities, paying deemed university fees for it. Nuclear Medicine, the other imaging branch, closed at 838 for MD. If the AI threat were real in their eyes, this is not what the list would look like. What do they see that we are missing? My reading, as a radiologist and a teacher of 26 years: 1. They see AI as a tool. This generation grew up with software doing half the work. To them, an AI that drafts a report is like a calculator. It makes the radiologist faster, not unnecessary. 2. They know who gets replaced. It is the radiologist who refuses to use AI. 3. They see where medicine is going. More and more clinical decisions now pass through an image. More scans, more follow ups, more screening, more interventional work. 4. They value the life it offers. Teleradiology, flexible hours and a skill that travels across cities and borders. So is the new generation right? I think they have sensed something many of us are still debating. The fear was that AI would make radiologists irrelevant. The young doctor's bet is that AI will make good radiologists indispensable. Data: MCC provisional allotment, NEET PG 2026 Round 1. Open seats. #NEETPG2026 #Radiology #AIinHealthcare #MedicalEducation #FutureOfMedicine

Your rank, your branch: the Round 1 thresholds Miss rank 3,058 and MD Radiology was gone. Miss 5,705 and DNB Radiology was gone too. Every year students ask me one question: "Sir, at my rank, what can I get?" Here is the answer from NEET PG 2026 Round 1, branch by branch. Last Open seat in Round 1
(MD/MS in the All India Quota | DNB | Diploma) Radiology: 3,058 | 5,705 | 15,479 Medicine: 4,703 | 12,413 Dermatology: 5,628 | 4,480 Paediatrics: 9,574 | 17,931 | 41,764 General Surgery: 14,012 | 27,458 OBG: 14,190 | 19,559 | 41,835 Orthopaedics: 15,591 | 33,600 Ophthalmology: 19,165 | 29,203 | 60,000 ENT: 20,996 | 28,399 | 49,639 Anaesthesia: 24,614 | 36,391 | 59,746 Read it as rank bands •Under 3,000: every clinical MD was open to you. •3,000 to 5,700: MD Radiology and MD Medicine closed. DNB Radiology, DNB Medicine and MD Dermatology were still open. •5,700 to 12,400: DNB Medicine and MD Paediatrics were still open, along with every surgical MD. •12,400 to 20,000: MD Surgery, OBG, Ortho and Ophthalmology were still within reach, closing between 14,012 and 19,165. •20,000 to 36,000: Government MD was mostly gone except ENT and Anaesthesia. DNB carried Surgery to 27,458, Ophthalmology to 29,203 and Ortho to 33,600. •Beyond that: diplomas in Paediatrics, OBG and Ophthalmology, and deemed university seats, which stayed open till about 1 lakh or beyond in every one of these branches. Three things this tells you 1DNB adds 5,000 to 18,000 ranks to most branches. Leave DNB off your list and you leave out a big share of your real options. 2The gap between MD and DNB is widest in Ortho (18,009 ranks) and Surgery (13,446). Dermatology is the exception: DNB closed at 4,480, before MD at 5,628. 3These are Round 1 numbers. Upgrades and Round 2 will push most cutoffs further. If you were a few hundred ranks short, do not give up on the branch yet. Note: Open category, non PwD seats. Reserved category cutoffs run later and differ by branch. Data: MCC provisional allotment, NEET PG 2026 Round 1. #NEETPG2026 #NEETPGCounselling #Cutoff #MedicalEducation #DAMS

"Sir, is surgery declining?" A final year student asked me this after Round 1, the allotment list open on her phone. "Medicine closed at 4,703, Radiology at 3,058, Dermatology at 5,628. General Surgery went till 14,012 and Ortho till 15,591. Am I making a mistake by choosing surgery?" Here is what I told her. And I am a radiologist not a surgeon. 1. Yes, the gap this year is real. Of the top 1,000 ranks, 407 chose Medicine and 299 Radiology. General Surgery got 44, OBG 33, Ortho 13. The median Open rank was 635 for Radiology and 5,230 for General Surgery. That tells you what this batch chose. It does not tell you what surgery is worth. 2. Toppers still chose surgery. 12 of the top 200 seats went to surgical branches. Rank 30 took Ortho at BJMC Ahmedabad. Ranks 73, 87 and 157 took General Surgery at RML. Surgery at RML closed at 480, at Safdarjung at 526. DrNB Plastic Surgery opened at 735, Neurosurgery at 1,051. 3. Seats move the cutoff. General Surgery had 496 Open AIQ seats. Dermatology had 117. Give Surgery only 117 seats and, on this year's actual choices, it closes around 2,618, tighter than Dermatology. With Radiology's 219 seats, it closes at 4,646, right next to Medicine. A late cutoff often just means a big branch with many seats. 4. Choices carry a bias. Students who want Radiology or Medicine know these go at the top, so they work harder and chase the rank. The rank follows the ambition. A student who loves surgery often knows the seat will come at a more forgiving rank and plans around that. The cutoff shows who aimed where. It does not rank the branches. 5. Our picture of a doctor is a physician. As students we imagine a stethoscope and a clinic, and assume physicians have more scope. It is a misconception. Think of the most famous doctors you know. Most are surgeons. In most big hospitals, the names with the most leverage with management and the biggest patient following are surgeons. A good surgeon with good hands builds a reputation that no cutoff can measure. So if you enjoy the operation theatre, boy or girl, do not read Round 1 as surgery declining. These numbers reflect one year's choices, not a branch's future. Choose surgery because you love it. Its future is decided by the people who practise it well, not by one year's closing rank. Data: MCC provisional allotment, NEET PG 2026 Round1 #NEETPG2026 #Surgery #MedicalEducation #CareerChoices

Rank 3,058 could have taken a seat at Maulana Azad Medical College. They took Radiology in Silvassa instead. That one allotment from NEET PG 2026 Round 1 says what the other 28,722 confirm. The young doctor of 2026 is choosing like an investor. They pick the subject that will carry a 30 year career, accept any city to get it, and treat MD and DNB as two routes to the same destination. Delhi's great colleges still collect the toppers, but only within the subjects those toppers wanted. Here is what the counselling data shows. The asset is the subject Toppers placed their ranks on two subjects. • Medicine and Radiology took 77% of the seats allotted within the top 1,000. Add Dermatology and it reaches 84%. • Of the 4,144 seats taken within the top 5,000, only 5 were in non clinical subjects. • Anaesthesiology is the largest pool in the country, with 3,532 seats in this round. Only 3 of the top 1,000 picked it. Once the subject is fixed, the map becomes negotiable. Look at where the last Open MD seat in the All India Quota went. • Radiology closed at rank 3,058 in Silvassa. • Medicine closed at 4,703 in Tezpur, Assam. • Paediatrics closed at 9,574 and General Surgery at 14,012, both in Mizoram. • Obstetrics and Gynaecology closed at 14,190 and Anaesthesiology at 24,614, both in Arunachal Pradesh. All ten major clinical branches closed at young colleges far from the metros. The candidate at 3,058 walked past Pathology at MAMC (open till 9,315), Ophthalmology at IMS BHU (3,878) and Anaesthesiology at Madras Medical College (5,932). MD or DNB: two routes, one destination The label has stopped mattering to the people with the most choice. • Within the top 10,000, Radiology split almost exactly in half: 576 took MD, 575 took DNB or the NBEMS diploma. • Within the top 10,000, 43% of those who chose Medicine went the DNB route. • Sir Ganga Ram Hospital filled DNB Medicine from rank 91 and DNB Radiology from rank 192. • Aravind Eye Hospital, Coimbatore took rank 175 for DNB Ophthalmology. The first MS Ophthalmology seat went at 351. • In Dermatology, DNB Open seats closed at 4,480, before MD at 5,628. Delhi still wins, on the subject's terms Safdarjung, RML, MAMC and Lady Hardinge took 161 of the 918 seats allotted within the top 1,000. That is 17.5% of the country's best ranks on four campuses. Now look at what those 161 toppers studied. 103 took Medicine or Radiology, and 160 took a clinical subject. Only one took Anaesthesiology, though these four colleges allotted 139 Anaesthesiology seats in this round. Data: MCC provisional seat allotment, NEET PG 2026 Round 1, released 23 October 2026 (28,723 allotments). Closing ranks refer to Open, non PwD seats. Round 2 will shift individual cutoffs. #NEETPG2026 #NEETPGCounselling #MedicalEducation #DNB #Radiology #CareerChoices

What Our Top 100 Ranking Doctors Choices Tell Me after NEETPG 1st counselling I see 52 of the top 100 allotments in Medicine, 23 in Radiology and 11 in Dermatology, I see young doctors choosing the kind of lives they want to build. Medicine’s appeal reassures me. There is still a deep attraction to bedside diagnosis, clinical reasoning and the responsibility of treating the whole patient. For many students, that is why they became doctors. But I suspect another ambition sits alongside that love: Medicine is also a doorway to superspecialisation. Some candidates choosing MD Medicine are already imagining themselves as cardiologists, neurologists or gastroenterologists. They are choosing the beginning of a longer journey, accepting more training and demanding years ahead. Radiology and Dermatology bring a different set of considerations into the conversation. Intellectual interest matters, but so do financial independence, control over working hours and space for family and personal life. I don’t think we should make young doctors feel guilty for considering these things. Wanting a sustainable career is a sensible ambition. Of course, neither branch guarantees an easy life. Radiology can mean relentless reporting volumes, emergency calls and considerable diagnostic responsibility. Dermatology requires clinical judgement, patient relationships and, depending on the career chosen, the work of building a practice. And then there is AI. Could anxiety about AI have nudged some students away from Radiology? Possibly. Its share might be slightly lower than in earlier years, What stands out to me is that 23 out of 100 is still substantial. Students are clearly weighing the uncertainty alongside the opportunities. My advice is to look beyond the allotment-day excitement. Ask yourself: Do I enjoy this specialty’s everyday work? Am I comfortable with its training pathway? What will an ordinary Tuesday in this career feel like ten years from now? A rank gives you options. Understanding yourself helps you choose. #neetpg #medx #MedTwitter

My advice to students who are worried about choosing Radiology because of AI is simple: Don’t choose or reject a specialty based on the fear of what AI might do. Understand how the specialty itself is evolving. I have been a radiologist for many years, and I actually feel that AI may create an interesting paradox for our profession. Yes, AI will certainly automate many routine aspects of reporting. Some of the work that radiologists do today may not require the same human involvement tomorrow. We should acknowledge that rather than pretend nothing will change. But there is another side to this story. When imaging becomes faster, cheaper and more accurate, its applications are likely to expand. We have already seen how the increasing availability of CT and MRI has transformed clinical medicine. Imagine what happens when portable MRI, affordable imaging systems, AI-assisted diagnostics and predictive imaging become more widely available. We may end up performing far more scans, using imaging for many more clinical decisions, and detecting diseases much earlier than we do today. And radiologists themselves will evolve from simply interpreting images to becoming more involved in clinical decision-making, interventions, imaging biomarkers and predicting disease outcomes. So here is the paradox: AI may reduce the amount of human work required per scan, but simultaneously increase the overall importance and reach of radiology. My advice is that if you genuinely love anatomy, imaging, technology, clinical problem-solving and the diagnostic side of medicine, Radiology remains a very exciting career choice. However, enter it with the mindset that you will need to continuously learn, develop clinical expertise and work alongside AI rather than compete with it. Nobody can predict the job market 15 or 20 years from now with certainty, in radiology or in any other specialty. Don’t choose Radiology assuming it will remain exactly as it is today. And don’t reject it assuming AI will make radiologists irrelevant. The future probably lies somewhere in between, and personally, I am quite optimistic about it. #radiology #medx #MedTwitter #ArtificialIntelligence

The Better the Machine Gets, the Better You Need to Be- In 1983, psychologist Lisanne Bainbridge described the irony of automation. The machine handles the routine. The human is left to step in only when things go badly wrong. But by then, the human has stopped practising the very skill that moment demands. Medicine is now living this. In a 2025 Lancet study, endoscopists who had grown used to AI polyp detection were tested without it. Their detection rate dropped from about 28 percent to 22 percent. Within months. In radiology I see it daily. When software marks a region, the eye goes there and stays there. The tool decides where you look. If you never trained your eye to wander, you will never see what it missed. So stop chasing tools. Good technology becomes invisible. Nobody takes a course in electricity before switching on a light. Todays prompting tricks will age like 2002s how to use Google workshops. What never gets easier is judgment. And you can only verify what you truly understand. AI will answer everything with confidence. A wrong answer is harmless only to someone who can recognise it as wrong. Human in the loop means nothing if the human cannot argue with the loop. My advice to students: Think first, then check with AI. Never the reverse. Practise without it regularly, the way pilots must fly manually. Use it to challenge your reasoning, not replace it. The future will not belong to those who know the most tools. It will belong to those the tools cannot fool. If every system went dark tomorrow, how good would you actually be? #MedicalEducation #AI #Radiology #FutureOfMedicine #NEETPG

Sometimes, answering every question can still miss the point. Recently, a student booked a half-hour career counselling session with me through the DAMS app. He sent a detailed questionnaire: radiology, AI, job opportunities, private practice, the economics of running a centre, and diploma-to-DNB pathways. Given his available options, he was considering a diploma in radiology. We began discussing his questions. But something caught my attention: he kept returning to obstetrics and gynaecology. About ten minutes into the call, I suggested we pause the questionnaire and take a step back. What had he enjoyed during internship? How did he feel about the work in each specialty? What had he wanted to pursue before the results? As we explored these questions, his original ambition became clearer: MS Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Radiology had entered the picture as an option after the results. That clarity mattered. He could now assess his realistic options with a better understanding of what he wanted. The conversation reminded me how easily expertise can put us into answering mode. We see a list of questions and start working through it. Yet the student may still be trying to understand the decision those questions are meant to resolve. Sometimes, our most useful contribution as educators is to help a student step back far enough to see the whole picture. Are we listening only for a question we can answer or also for the uncertainty behind it? #medx #medtwitter

AI is beginning to prescribe. What should that mean for medicine? On October 5, Nolla Health announced a Utah pilot allowing AI to issue initial prescriptions for acne. nollahealth.com/blog/ai-pres… That is a significant step beyond recommending treatment or renewing an existing prescription.The details matter. The system selects from pre-approved topical treatment plans. Severe acne, pregnancy and cases outside its scope are referred to clinicians. Physician oversight begins with approval of every prescription and may move towards retrospective review and sampling as the pilot progresses. For someone struggling to access a dermatologist, earlier treatment could make a meaningful difference.But agreement with a physician is only one measure of safety. We also need to know what the system misses, how reliably it recognises exceptions, and whether patients reach a human when their condition changes.Utah itself makes an important distinction: participation in its regulatory sandbox is not a state endorsement of the product. My view: carefully bounded prescribing deserves serious evaluation. Expanding autonomy should depend on patient outcomes, independent scrutiny and clear accountability.For India, the access potential is considerable. So is the responsibility to validate these systems across our patients, languages and care settings. The milestone is AI issuing a prescription. The achievement will be proving that patients receive safer, timely care.#ArtificialIntelligence #HealthcareAI #MedicalEthics #DigitalHealth

AETCOM is a part of the MBBS curriculum. But ethics cannot be learned through lectures alone. Introduce the principles early. Teach their application when students have real clinical exposure. Then make demonstrated competence in ethics and communication a mandatory requirement for graduation. #medicalethics