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...
Monetary transfers while traveling were fascinating. Hiding the currency notes in a deep pocket, such as the one stitched on the inner side of the vest, was all too common. My grandfather traveled this way with the money hidden from the pickpockets' maneuvers. He could even feel it with his bare hand on his torso if the need arose. My father, a generation younger, preferred to keep his money safely hidden in his socks while traveling. Unwilling to reveal his hideout, he continued to wear his shoes, unmindful of the discomfort they caused. As for me, I ridiculed the idea of such safe places, but I carried mine in the deep pockets of my jacket or neatly rolled into the drawstring pocket of my salwar. Generation Z did not believe in the cheat sheets that we hoisted. They went a step further and carried their bank in their pockets. Their cheat sheets consisted of PINs and passwords as they swiped or transferred. My Paytm account was messed up by cheats when my husband responded to a co...