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 s...
If you have ever tried starting yoga, you know the struggle: motivation fades, and mats gather dust. For me, yoga was always on my bucket list, but what I needed was the intent to start. Then something unexpected happened. My yoga group formed an unusual trio: my 80-year-old mother, my niece visiting from the USA, and me. Every morning at 6:30 am, we gathered not in the garden but in front of our TV to tune into live yoga sessions by Saurabh Bothra. And guess what? Yoga did happen. It wasn’t perfect, but it was consistent. We stretched, laughed, and even dozed off in shavaasan, but slowly, breath by breath, a habit was born. Because sometimes all it takes is showing up together.