e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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“Your Map to the Future”: learning to deal with disturbingly uncertain times

This is my first post in months, and isn’t specific to healthcare. I’m doing it for a couple of reasons. First, this is an important new book by one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever known, and second, it’s about a dangerous situation that’s driving a lot of people nuts. The danger is real, and I think there’s a way to not lose our minds over it.

As I approach age 75, I’m in a position to say this bluntly: we live in disturbingly uncertain times, and “we” includes you. I say this as someone who’s spent his whole career working to understand what’s going on under the surface, whether it was in graphic arts or then in healthcare. Such questions require asking a lot of “Why??” so that any improvement you propose can be built on understand what’s eternal.

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Governing wildfires: What we can learn about AI from our history with cars

I asked GPT-4o for an image representing AI as a powerful wild horse pulling a Roman chariot with five people in it. Here’s what I got. Impressive, but not quite right: not a chariot, and not five people(! … how hard is THAT to get right??)

An analogy came up last month that I think bears discussion, and I wonder what you think. Everyone knows we have to watch out for AI’s dangers, but the same was true when cars were new. And electricity. And machinery. How do we learn to move forward – to enjoy new power – without horrible risks??

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Exploring: “I use it to help me think” … #PatientsUseAI, example 2

Next in the series about the new hashtag #PatientsUseAI. It’s important that medicine know this, because our priorities can be different from the industry’s, and we need this powerful tool too.

My first post said that while the world rushes to regulate AI, healthcare is ignoring patients as actual users of the technology. And that’s a huge oversight that we must fix.

Patients have real work to do.
AI can help do it.

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Researching a difficult diagnosis: #PatientsUseAI, example 1

On Monday I called for us to start using a new hashtag #PatientsUseAI, because we in the patient community keep seeing doctors and regulators and businesses talk about industry using AI, and nobody’s taking into account that we out here are using it too – and we may have different priorities. The graphic at right spotlighted five ways patients are already using AI. This post is the first in a series about them.

September 11, 2023 will live forever in my memory as bringing the most crystal-clear contrast I’ve ever seen between the paternal old guard and an arriving new reality: patients with real problems using artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve outcomes. That morning, at the annual meeting of the global standards organization HL7, a famous doctor gave a speech about AI, and near the end he said:

“It is just too early for us to give generative AI to patients
and expect that the results will be good.”

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“The AI Revolution in Medicine”: best book by far on AI in healthcare

The authors (L to R): Peter Lee, Carey Goldberg, Zak Kohane. Photo: Associated Press / Pearson.

I’ve been learning everything I can about what AI will do to help healthcare achieve its potential, and especially how it will help e-patients be stronger contributors. The game’s not over (this game will never be over) but so far, this is the book! The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond.

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Our Sense home energy monitor saved our butts and our bucks.

Regular readers know I love data, especially my own health data. This post isn’t about health data, but it makes my favorite point: knowledge is power, and it’s empowering to know what’s going on. Am I right?

Last year we got a nifty thing for home energy management, and this summer it detected a small disaster in process that would have cost us hundreds of dollars. At the peak of AC season in July, this notification popped up on my phone one morning: my electricity consumption was FOUR TIMES normal:

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