HEALTHCARE · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE · PATIENT EXPERIENCE Years ago, at a government hospital, I heard a surgeon say about a patient who kept asking him questions, "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. ...
"You always say you don’t see many movies, but still, you seem to have seen every one of them," commented my husband. ‘Yes, I used to see all the movies in my younger years that came on television, and besides this, we have always been blessed to stay in houses that had cinema halls just within walking distance. Living in a joint family with uncles and aunts was another privilege. The good old days are gone. Never mind, we now have theaters in every house. Fifty-five-inch screens and Netflix, backed by home theater systems, suffice for the theaters. Soon I too disappeared into my phone, tablet, and the next smart thing, all too tempting to disengage. Google's recommendation to watch ten movies before Netflix decided to remove them drew my attention to a classic. It was also recommended once by my sister; by name, it was a woman-oriented movie, and not one but two women, and lastly, it appeared in the comedy section. I was all eyes and ears to ‘Julie and Julia.' Aft...