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The Patient Who Asked Too Many Questions: How AI Is Changing the Conversation in Medicine

HEALTHCARE · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE · PATIENT EXPERIENCE Years ago, at a government hospital, I heard a surgeon say about a patient who kept asking him, "She must be a teacher." He was half-joking. She turned out to be one. It became my private joke: anyone who asks that many questions must be a teacher. I didn't know I'd think of that remark again. I think of it now because the patient who asks too many questions is no longer rare. She is in my family. Perhaps you have encountered her, too.   A new kind of conversation My mother, my uncles, and my aunts are not medical professionals. When an unfamiliar symptom appears, they don't know the terminology, the likely causes, or the right questions to ask. But they have found ChatGPT and Gemini, and they talk to them like buddies. A symptom prompts a question, an answer prompts another, and nobody waits. Voice input matters most. They don't have to type a carefully worded query or know the medical term. They speak...
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M DRIVE

My son had just won the documentary-making competition at Life in Mayoor School. We were watching this for the nth time on the laptop. It was sheer fun watching it again and again.

My son clicked on the project folder and opened the list of projects he had created for the cultural week and annual functions at school over the years. They varied from short stories to informational projects to movie trailers and documentaries. Watching this all reversed the time clock for me. Every project had its own story, enthusiasm, excitement, excellence, our fights, and, above all, togetherness. We always had our ups and downs doing such things. I could hardly do what my children could do on the computer. I was their constant companion with suggestions on how what they were doing was shaping up and what would make a difference. Sometimes my suggestions were considered, and at other times, rubbished. We all worked very hard in our spheres to do our best, they on the technical side and I on the emotional side, to encourage them. The outcome was ecstatic. Like the project folder on the D drive, our memories of togetherness will always be on the M (mind) drive even after many years.

Comments

  1. Shikhar SharmaNovember 9, 2011 at 4:08 PM

    Nice :)

    There really is a story behind each of these projects - very immersive

    ReplyDelete

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