Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Generative AI's Most Useful Healthcare Use Case

(2024-09-01)

Sep 01, 2024

Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Generative AI's Most Useful Healthcare Use Case (2024-09-01) :: View in Browser

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What's On My Mind: Generative AI's Most Useful Healthcare Use Case

This week, something completely different. I just returned from... surgery! Yes, I had unplanned surgery due to gall bladder issues I didn't know I had. On Tuesday, I thought I had food poisoning, but by the time I got home from a client event on Thursday, I knew something was up. I went to bed, woke up Friday morning, and went to urgent care. They said, "uh, sir, you need to go to the ER," and I did. After a whole bunch of tests, they determined that something was seriously wrong with my gall bladder (like you're about to go into septic shock and die within a week), removed it, and I came home this morning.

The medical team at Metrowest Union Hospital did a great job and I'm grateful to them, my family, and the team at Trust Insights for all the support and care I've received over the last two days.

Now, that's not the headline story, or at the very least, that's not what this newsletter is about. No, this issue is about generative AI. As soon as I knew I had to go to urgent care, I started to document everything that had been going on. So I gave ChatGPT a prompt that went like this:

"You're an award-winning physician with expertise in all forms of medicine. I need your help compiling a thorough intake list, as I'm on the way to seek medical care. I want you to ask me all the questions a doctor would ask on intake so that I have everything written down and documented. We will want things like symptoms, a timeline of events, and everything you think is appropriate for me to provide to my doctor. I do not want you to provide a diagnosis; that we will leave up to my doctor. But I want to make sure my doctor has all the information they need. Please start asking me questions."

Over the span of 15 minutes, ChatGPT (and really, any foundation model could do this, I just had the ChatGPT app on my phone) asked me question after question, and spit out this summary at the end.

Patient Summary:

[omitted personal medical data]

Current Symptoms and Timeline:

Tuesday (Los Angeles):
- Consumed a burrito at approximately 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time, followed by tortilla chips and other snacks around 5 p.m.
- Experienced severe vomiting from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., expelling a combination of burrito contents, tortilla chips, and salsa.
- Experienced excruciating abdominal pain during this time.
- Managed pain slightly with ibuprofen; acetaminophen had minimal effect unless combined with ibuprofen.
- Eventually managed to sleep through the night.
Wednesday:
- Felt unsteady but completed a presentation.
- Meals: Plain bagel for breakfast, turkey and cheese sandwich for lunch.
- Continued to manage discomfort with a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.
Thursday:
- Flew back home and attempted to reduce medication intake.
- Pain progressively worsened throughout the day and during the flight.
- Meals: Omelet and a bagel for breakfast, snacks on the plane.
- Took two ibuprofen before bed at 11 p.m. (Eastern Time) and slept until 4 a.m., when pain woke you up.
- Have been eating approximately one and a half meals per day since Tuesday.
Friday:
- Tested negative for COVID, flu, and RSV with a combo test this morning.

Pain Description and Physical Discomfort:

Location of Pain:
- Near the top of the stomach on the front side of the body.
- Between and below the shoulder blades on the back side of the body.
Pain Level: Consistently around 7-8 on a scale of 10.
Additional Symptoms:
- Difficulty breathing, though heart function is normal.
- Difficulty maintaining a prone or seated position.
Positioning:
- Laying down flat is uncomfortable.
- Laying on the side is marginally more comfortable.
- Laying on the stomach is very uncomfortable.
- Sleep on a sleeping wedge to elevate the body, which is part of normal life.

Heart and Respiratory Observations:

ECG: Normal sinus rhythm, tested repeatedly over the last two days.
Blood Oxygen Levels: Normal, around 97%.
Heart Rate: Elevated over the last two days due to pain.

Medications and Supplements:

Daily Supplements:
- Psyllium husk fiber, approximately 2.5 grams per day.
- Standard multivitamin.
No other medications taken regularly.

Similar Past Incident:

Earlier this year in Edmonton, Canada, a similar but less severe episode occurred.

After I visited urgent care, I took a screenshot of the printout and had ChatGPT add that to the summary so that when I arrived at the ER, I didn't have to repeat myself. I was able to hand the attending physician my phone and get them up to speed very quickly.

Summarization is one of the top use cases of generative AI, and in this case, it was able to take a lot of rambling, disorganized inputs (because I kept revisiting things out of order) and organize them well.

The feedback I got from the physicians in both urgent care and the ER started the same. "Are you a doctor? Do you work in healthcare? This is very thorough!". Had I not been in exceptional pain, I would have explained what I actually do for work.

I want to reiterate and re-emphasize that ChatGPT and generative AI are NOT medical diagnostic tools. They cannot substitute for a human doctor.

They cannot make accurate medical diagnoses, and you certainly wouldn't want to bet your life on it. But they CAN dramatically speed up the intake process AND be very comprehensive about it, especially if you're not able to think as clearly as you usually do. And it's my hope that people and medical professionals think of them in that aspect - as an endlessly patient assistant who can keep asking questions, keep taking in disorganized information, and keep providing outstanding summaries.

As long as I follow post-surgery guidelines, I should make a full recovery in a few weeks. For the folks who will see me on stage in a few weeks at the different events, you'll please understand if I'm not 100% myself, but I will deliver all the value I can. And again, I can't thank enough my family, the staff at Metrowest Hospital, and my friends at Trust Insights for getting me through this rather surprising turn of events.

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Ernie Boxall

Sep 1

My point is that you warn us that ChatGPT is not a diagnostic tool. I believe that in the near future children, who have seen their parents using AI will be told to use it instead of calling the surgery...use it before you call the doctor. The FBI (all law and security agencies probably already have the links into AI) will have all the information not just on us but on our children and will use it to target.

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