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...
“She’s your daughter,” my husband’s acquaintance asked him when I met him for the first time while we waited for our turn at a shop. I giggled at his joke and marveled at his judgment of my age. That was when I was dark-haired. A few years later, my hair started to turn grey. We often visited a complex together regularly, so regularly that the guard could identify the two of us. The irony struck when my husband had to travel alone. Then the guard asked, “Mummy Ji has not come today.” I laughed at the cruel joke. It is not that I mind going old: I do mind looking old, so aptly said by someone, I thought. I had the usual concerns as someone in the fourth decade. I was beginning to hide that lock of silver hair so conspicuous on my scalp. It has been a source of pride for all the years spent well. I found myself reminiscing about the hair. I felt great about the comparisons I had. A decade later, I was going ahead with a natural balayage without a penny spent. The...