HACKER Q&A
📣 wiraz

How do you find other fields problems?


Hello, I wonder how startups or good ideas creators, who are often people related with one specific field (for example Computer Science), find solutions to other fields problems (for example Medical ultrasound result verification). Are there good tools or solutions for that?


  👤 dieselgate Accepted Answer ✓
This is an interesting question! I’ve never personally seen anything intentionally for solving this - but I’m curious what your angle is. Are you looking for a solution to your problem by seeking a relevant problem/solution in the other field? Or potentially looking for product/market fit in other fields?

Richard Feynman touches on this a bit when he starts doing some work related to biology (iirc).

As an individual id recommend gaining a broad exposure to different fields whenever possible. Maybe websites like phys.Org (science news aggregator) or big journals like Nature/Science could help (thinking specifically Review articles rather than research publications). Also if you have any exposure to a research institution getting to know graduate students could possibly help (easier said than done!)

Lastly, I personally have the impression that the field of neuroscience is very broad and may be of relevance/interest to you. There is a lot of computation involved and people draw from diverse academic backgrounds - wouldn’t be surprised if ultrasound is used in neuroscience research but not sure (I am not a neuroscientist but my SO is)

Addendum: I’m not a Twitter user but perhaps “science Twitter” could help you gain exposure to problems being faced in other fields.

Good luck


👤 speedylight
What helps me more than anything with this is exposure to all sorts of concepts, ideas, ways of thinking about things, soft skills so you can talk to other people and get knowledge from them… even just reading HN comments/articles you get an absolute wealth of valuable knowledge especially about CS but also more than that, I know I sure have.

There’s no shortage of ways of to find content/material on a topic like CS for instance You have HN, Twitter, Reddit, a brigade of self hosted blogs and medium posts, Discord servers, YouTube, MITs free courses for more formal approach, etc etc

The idea is that when you understand something well enough, such as being able to train and run your own machine learning model, or anything else really, your brain can apply that knowledge to problems you may come across in the future even in seemingly unrelated fields and scenarios such as medical imaging.


👤 eimrine
Find a mentor with strong Medical ultrasound skills and obey to everything he says? I don't sure Medical ultrasound verificator can solve much of CS problems.