190 - Dr. Google Gets an Upgrade: Can AI have a role in patient empowerment?

Technology offers unprecedented access to health information, but navigating it effectively requires understanding which tools serve our recovery and when to step away from screens. Jess from TurnTo shares insights on using AI and technology tools to support recovery from conditions like Long Covid and ME/CFS.

• Different technology platforms have different agendas - social media optimizes for view time, search engines for quick clicks
• Approximately 10,000 new updates emerge weekly about Long Covid and ME/CFS across research, expert interviews, and patient discussions
• AI tools like ChatGPT can provide referenced health information when asked properly, often delivering more comprehensive answers than time-limited doctor appointments
• Patient experiences remain undervalued as "weak data" despite containing rich insights that often precede formal research findings
• TurnTo's new Personal Health Sidekick feature reads approximately one million words weekly, filtering information based on individual health concerns
• AI works best for information gathering and making connections between disparate data points
• Balance technology use with offline activities that support recovery - nature, human connection, and reducing nervous system activation
• When using AI for health questions, always request references and specify what type of information you're seeking
• Technology cannot replace human connection, empathy, and the physical examination healthcare professionals provide

Learn more about TurnTo and their Personal Health Sidekick feature in the links below: 

Check out Turny here (use code "Jackie" for 10% off)

Listen to our previous episode HERE

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jess and Turn2
• 5:59 Technology Information Overload
• 10:05 The Hidden Agendas of Tech Platforms
• 17:01 AI Reliability and Patient Experience
• 24:20 When to Step Away from Technology
• 31:31 The Personal Health Sidekick Feature
• 41:29 Asking Better Questions to AI
• 53:42 Episode Wrap-up and Resources

Transcript

Jackie Baxter: 0:55

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long Covid Podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by Jess, who is the founder of TurnTo. Now, jess has been on the podcast before where we talked about what TurnTo was, and that is episode 140, which I'll drop into the show notes. But today we're going to talk a little bit more broadly around technology and AI and how it can be useful in recovery, maybe a little bit about what's out there and also how we can make sure we use it for good rather than hindering recovery. So a very warm welcome, jess. It's so lovely to have you back here.

Jess Dove London: 1:36

Thanks, jackie, excited to be here.

Jackie Baxter: 1:40

So can you just give a sort of very brief introduction to who you are and what it is that you do?

Jess Dove London: 1:48

Yeah, so I have some connection to some of your listeners in that I had ME-CFS about 14, 15 years ago, very severely for a few years, and then I had some recovery. But then I also I feel over qualified as a health consumer. I had two twin kids and they have very complex medical issues and when one of them was diagnosed, I had this experience where a consultant told us there's nothing we can do to help him and, having been ill myself, I was like I don't know if that's actually true and, you know, just went on to find heaps and heaps of things that we could do for him, which, you know, over the course of two years I traveled around the world. I started studying neuroscience and I just kept finding treatments and, you know, just looked up and was like how?

Jess Dove London: 2:38

You know, a friend of mine got stage four lung cancer and another friend got MS and they just had this exact same problem where they were looking for the latest health breakthroughs and it was just so hard to find them. They were living all over the place. Yeah, so I started. I originally started a research project using AI to find more treatments for health consumers and then went on to start a startup with an ai company where we can. We're patient first and we. Our mission is to speed up health breakthroughs for people and use all the technology that's out there um for giving it to patients first, or consumers, depending what you like to call us yeah, and like I love what you were just saying about.

Jackie Baxter: 3:24

You know, it's probably not true for all health conditions, but certainly for things like lung, covid and mcfs. A lot of the kind of burden of working out what to do effectively is on the patient. Um, you know, the people that are recovering tend to be the ones that have gone searching for things, and that is incredibly difficult when you're not well. When you are, you know, possibly the illest you've ever been. And you know, just because the doctor tells you that there's nothing they can do doesn't mean that there isn't a way for you to get better, um, or for you to find improvement.

Jackie Baxter: 4:08

And you know, there was something that a relatively recent guest said and I'll paraphrase. It was something like if a doctor tells you you can't get better, then what they mean is that they can't help you get better. So find someone who can. And I love that because, yeah, you know it is. It's about finding what will work for you. You know, we know what doesn't, because you probably found that already. What will work for you will work for you, um. So, yeah, this, this is really cool, um. So you know how can tech be helpful? You know you just mentioned kind of data gathering or, you know, gathering of research papers or strategies, treatments. But how can we balance the kind of like okay, I don't have any information with oh, my goodness, I have far too much information, like overwhelm?

Jess Dove London: 5:07

It's really tricky, I think, for me probably like to first to look back, so like for my own lived experience, when I had ME CFS, you know, many years ago. You know, we, back then, we, there was no online community, really like we didn't have social media or Facebook groups, and so, like I guess you know, if we were to take tech back a little bit, we, you know I had doctors, you know that I was visiting, and then I met people in real life, you know, I'd meet someone I met so few people who had ME CFS and I was like holding on to their arm, like what's's happened? What do you tell me? Everything? Like, you know, how long have you been? Well, like you know, which was really challenging and confronting as well, um, so I guess you know that was my one lived experience of just having nothing and I had a lot of visual problems so I couldn't read. Um, I could sometimes get audio, but I couldn't always do the research of PubMed or through these, because you know we did have online sources of articles. So, yes, I think, looking back, you know that's where tech was.

Jess Dove London: 6:10

And then you know we've had this huge explosion of social media and more and more and more information. If you look at how much new information is coming out, it actually is completely overwhelming and it lives all over the place. So one of the really interesting things in long, covid and ME-CFS is actually 10,000, I'm not sure number new updates every single week and that's including research trials, interviews with experts and patient discussions all over the web. So it's impossible to to stay on top of everything because, yeah, there is more and more information everywhere, but it's also very siloed, as we know. You know, and there's different sort of agendas of these different platforms. Facebook groups have been incredible at times, but they also can have the same question come in every three days. So you know all these different things we all use whatever's. Our preference is giving us information, but you know, the technology behind it has got different agendas of why it's giving us this information so this is a really interesting point about different technology and the agenda behind it.

Jackie Baxter: 7:18

We're used to people having agenda, aren't we? But like the idea of technology having agenda. It's just like, are the robots taking over? Maybe they finally are, um, but maybe you can give a bit of an example here of different technologies and what their agenda is and how maybe we can work with or against that yeah, I think.

Jess Dove London: 7:39

I mean, I think there's definitely been like you know nothing. I'm saying here is that novel? And that there's a lot of discussion in the last few years around some of these things. But there is also a new wave of AI stuff, products coming through, which has different agendas, which some of it's really exciting. So I guess, if we think about Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, you know the agenda is, you know, view time, because the business model is ads. So you know it's about how do we give you, you know visually, a dopamine hit as quickly as possible from a variety of sources, and you know it even is even like so much science behind it all. How do we keep you coming back? How do we deal with boredom? How do we give you sort of that dopamine hit as quickly as possible? And so that's why, like in the health groups, you know, imagine if facebook had an agenda to further the breakthroughs of long covid, only cfs, um, the aggregate data they have. You know if they could identify it, they could be like, hey, 43 percent of people are finding this is triggering. You know, imagine what they could do with that data. Right, they could help people.

Jess Dove London: 8:44

But that's not the agenda and it's just because the agenda is use time, so. But then if you think about Google, like when you go to search, google's agenda is time to click, so like they want you to find something as quick as possible, and then if you stay on that site, you're telling Google that it's meeting your needs. So they actually aren't looking at watch time, they're looking at click through. And if you click through an ad you know advertisement, it's even better. Yeah, so if you look at YouTube, it's also watch time, so it's going in and showing. You know they actually it's very, very important that the hook matches the show.

Jess Dove London: 9:15

You know there's all these different things, all these different tools, but interestingly, like with a whole bunch of new AI tools coming out, there's some different things that are, you know, being measured. Things like the amount of queries that you're sending to. It is one of the metrics that some AI companies are looking at how often you're coming back. You know, and AI is so new that the and they haven't actually monetized a lot of these, these products. So it is a little bit more pure right now because the agenda is to give you the best answers as quickly as possible.

Jess Dove London: 9:49

Um, with a lot of these products, or some of the products, actually are to do the best research for on behalf of you, um, which takes some more time. But does that make sense, jackie? Like there's just these different things. So you know, if you're living with the condition and you're getting your information from some of these products, you're. You know the agenda isn't to give you a balanced view. You know, we all know that. You know it's to give you entertainment and to give you, you know, dopamine or drama or whatever it is.

Jess Dove London: 10:25

I mean. But again, there some a lot of good in those spaces too. Like I'm the first, I'm the first to say like Facebook groups are some of the best places to get really particular answers, answers for really random questions like what time does this clinic open or what's the cost of that. You know you get these amazing answers in like 10 minutes.

Jackie Baxter: 10:35

It's incredible yeah, and I suppose as well I mean the, the algorithm as well if you start looking at certain types of content, then it will show you more of that type of content, so it it can be kind of self-limiting as well, can't it with some of these things?

Jess Dove London: 10:55

100%, I mean, and there's huge, you know, historically, like we're only now, you know, know in the last two years, seeing certain types of content even come into some of these places. And so you know, if you think about health knowledge, health knowledge is living with lots of different sources research, you know, patient experiences, hard medical data, amazing clinicians, whatever. For years a lot of academics have stayed off some of these mediums and so we've actually missed those insights and perspectives. And you know, like one of my own stories from like why I started turn two is because I went to this huge conference with all these academics um, it was like a thousand academics and, um, you know, not all health conditions have as empowered patients. So this was the first time they'd ever let people with lived experience with cerebral palsy or parents, come to the conference, which is ridiculous.

Jess Dove London: 11:50

And I remember just, you know, being in one of these sessions with the world leader on stage just mentioning one treatment after another I'd never heard about and I read five to 10 papers a week because the insights are living in these expert, you know, discussions that are closed and I did put my hand up in the conference and say, you know, I shouldn't have to fly half around the world to learn about these things. When some of the things were free treatments, they were like cognitive-based work around brain injury. So, yeah, I think it's that they're not balanced not everybody's on there and the algorithms behind these we all know this. From what we watch on YouTube, you can see it really really clearly. But it's tricky because, yeah, you're not going to always get that then what you really need for, but you're going to get other things as well. So, and again, I never had it when I was really unwell and I think I definitely missed out on a lot of things.

Jackie Baxter: 12:45

Yeah, that's a really good point. And you know social media, or technology, let's say, because it's not just social media, you know it. It does have this ability to make things much more accessible. I mean, like that's literally the whole point of the podcast is to put that information out there so people can know it's there. And not everything will resonate with you, but that's OK. You're going to pick the bits.

Jackie Baxter: 13:13

That do you know, and my mission has always been to you know, to be, you know, completely open, open to anything. Um, you know, if it's working for somebody, then it's going to be interesting for someone to hear about it. Um, you know. So, you know I suppose I'm like an anti-algorithm, um, but, um, you know it, it does have. You know, all of this stuff has the ability to put stuff out there and I think you know, like you were saying, you know you struggle to get some of that information, whereas nowadays, I think it does help it to be a little bit more accessible. Obviously, you still have to look for it and you do still have to beat the algorithm for some of these things.

Jackie Baxter: 14:39

So you mentioned ai and you know, obviously this is starting to come much more into you know the world, you know sort of literally as we speak, and you know, I think until recently, you know it kind of has been one of those kind of jokes, hasn't it? Oh, put ai on it and you'll end up with seven fingers, um kind of thing. And how reliable is AI? Can we trust it? Do we still need to fact check everything? You know your product literally harnesses AI sort of in everything it does. So what are your kind of thoughts on that?

Jess Dove London: 15:18

Yeah, I think it's a very good question and the answer is probably nuanced because it is a changing so quickly. So I think, like you know, if you, let's say you know, if you're listening to this and you've played with ChatGPT or you've played with, let's say, played with ChatGPT a year ago, you know you would have gotten an answer that you know would have gotten quite a lot of hallucination. You wouldn't have had many references for the information that was shared back. You probably would have had an entertaining experience, because you know it's always quite novel. If you haven't played with jgbt, you know it's quite a novel experience. Um, or an image generator or video generator, you know it's all. It's all coming out now.

Jess Dove London: 15:56

Um, I think you know, until recently we there's a lot of unknowns, to be honest. So a lot of the scientists in this space AI engineers or the AI scientists would say like we need to use AI to understand AI, because it's a neural network. It's making predictions. That was what it used to be doing, but in the last few months, you know there's been a movement into reasoning. So what does that mean? You know it just means data connection, like the way I look at it is. You know I'm quite practical in the current moment and then in the future we don't really know. But in the current moment I look at use cases like what can it do for me today, really practically like, can it? What kind of data can it find me? Can it make analysis, can it explain things to me? And it's just improving more and more and more. And so, you know, my recommendation is always to use the main AI companies. There's a lot of people saying that word out there, but I would suggest using the sort of big four models. So, you know, using ChatGPT or using Claude or using Gemini from Google. You know those are the big ones really that are like, have their own fundamental foundational work and, yeah, I think in terms of accuracy, it's just gotten so much better, so quickly, and if you ask it for referencing, it's going to do a really good job.

Jess Dove London: 17:17

However, I would say you know we can't automate on knowledge that hasn't been captured and there is data bias because we are generalizing on data. That's there. Also, you know, one of my personal beliefs is patient experiences have been, you know, I considered weak data. You know we've all probably had the experience when we're talking with medical professionals that you know, patient experiences are just considered unreliable. However, like you know, I think it's just a fundamental problem of medical knowledge and research is so far behind patient experiences.

Jess Dove London: 17:56

You know years and years and years and then when you look at big studies that happen, you know, let's say they're studying a big treatment. You know years and years and years and then when you look at big studies that happen, you know, let's say they're studying a big treatment. You know the treatment intentionally will remove all the people from the study who have got too many sort of variables, and so we're actually like just losing this rich. You know it's about and I get why they have to do it because they need to prove efficacy as quickly as possible. To like seize is going to be helpful, but when you remove all the nuance, you lose all the richness and the possible answers.

Jess Dove London: 18:27

Even so, I think that the challenge that a lot of AI answer, you know, chatbot or answer experiences is the human piece. It's going to get better and better. I have no doubt that it will, but we, we it is definitely a missing piece, and I think the other challenge is you know, if you don't know how to and this is a flaw, and I think it will get better and better. But if you don't know how to ask questions properly, there is confirmation bias. So the models want to please you. So, but they are getting much better.

Jess Dove London: 19:00

So, again, if you haven't used one of these tools recently and you have a, let's say, have a really burning question right now where you got a report from a doctor or a blood result, you know you maybe just cut your name out of it. I'd suggest stick it in and um one of these chat bots and you'll be amazed. And if you say, can you answer me with some evidence? You know, I, I almost would bet it's probably eight out of ten times better than asking your doctor. You know, in terms of what you're going to get back and the richness of what you're going to learn.

Jackie Baxter: 19:29

I love the idea that, um, the ai is people pleaser, though that, uh, that resonates very nicely with me as a recovering people. Please problematic.

Jess Dove London: 19:38

It's problematic, though they're trying to get rid of it, but it's it is.

Jackie Baxter: 19:41

It's a problem yeah, I mean, what I'm getting from what you just said is that it is very good at kind of working through, chewing through data. Um, you know, analyzing stuff and all of that you know, which is great, because as humans we can be totally rubbish at that. Um, you know, give me a blood report and my eyes will glaze over, um, whereas actually you know, feed it into a, an ai, and it'll give me the bullet point summary and I'll be like, oh, okay, cool, that's what that means for me, great, um, I think the question I would ask then would be like okay, but is that actually true? Do I need to fact check that? And then, how would I then go about that? Because I'm sort of a little bit cynical and slightly suspicious of a computer telling me answers. But, as you say, you know this is work in progress, right, you know, and and all of that. But I think you know, particularly in this space, you know, data is useful. Research is useful, absolutely it is. But if it's very good at chewing through data and referencing stuff, it's going to give us the research that has been published. What it's not going to give us so much of is that anecdotal evidence of what is this person finding useful in this moment? Because you can't scientifically reference that. That's, as you said, the patient experience. And yet so much of what is helping people to get better is that patient experience. It is. Oh, I tried this thing and it's really helped me because of this. Or take this thing, but actually change it a little bit, because in this space it doesn't work. You know that that's not referenced in a scientific paper.

Jackie Baxter: 21:28

Um, so I suppose this comes into the kind of flip side of this. How do we know when to not rely on technology? Because technology is great, you know, let's not deny it. The pandemic has taught us that. Right, you know, if we didn't have access to Zoom, you and I wouldn't be able to have this conversation right now. I wouldn't be able to do most of the work that I do. The podcast couldn't exist, so much of the connection that's happened between people through this experience wouldn't be able to happen. So technology can be absolutely wonderful, you know, in a lifeline to so many people, but like everything, it has a flip side. So, yeah, what are the kind of times where we need to get away from technology and maybe lean more into the experience and the feeling?

Jess Dove London: 22:19

I think that, you know, I probably would say, I think I'd look at it probably not as technology, but the what behind the technology. So if you think about what was Facebook? Originally it was like human connection, right, it was your friends connecting each other. And then this, you know, one platform just facilitates that. So I probably would look at it like, let's right, you know, it was your friends connecting each other. And then this, this, you know, one platform just facilitates that. So I probably would look at it like let's, you know, put the the reason first and then look at how technologies and then whether that's helpful or not helpful. You know, because I think that's that's really the issues. Right, we have so many technology tools doing tasks, you know, even, let's say, watching the news. You'd sit and watch it at television, you'd read the newspaper or you'd digest news differently historically, but now we're digesting it in bite sizes and all these different sort of really unhelpful summaries on these different tech products, on these different tech products. So I think for me I'd look at it like the reason behind the tech and then assessing if that's helpful. You know, if it's just habits, bad habits actually, of getting just a little tiny, is it even a dopamine hit I heard Andy Hooperman talking about recently, but it's definitely doing some unhelpful things a lot of the time.

Jess Dove London: 23:33

So probably for me, when I look at the ai piece, I think about the why behind it for patient you know, I'm always just thinking about this from healthcare is that I think? Why do you go to the doctor? You know, like, what are you looking for? Are you going to better understanding for your symptoms? Are you going for empathy, understand, like what are you going there for? Um? And I think then it's like what's the best tool for that reason, is it that you're look, wanting more, true? Are you like I'm thinking about taking this medication or I'm thinking about doing hyperbaric oxygen? You know there's a bunch of stuff obviously that's been happening in this community. I'm thinking about doing x, or I'm wondering about this, or I'm confused about this symptom. And I think I'd look at what is the best way to get the answer to that piece, because I think my true opinion is, most of the time your medical team, for a lot of these specific conditions, just doesn't give you satisfaction. They don't, you know. They're seeing so many people. They're just humans like you know. They can't let's just saying know, maybe a handful of people around the world and lucky enough to see them, and even then maybe they don't know what the latest thing is about. You know, some random treatment, or or maybe they missed something from a month ago.

Jess Dove London: 24:47

You know, I had this lived experience with my son in the last month where he developed some, some knee pain and we had an appointment with his consultant, who's a specialist, and I said to the doctor should we be doing some bone density scan? My son has cerebral palsy? And the doctor was like no, no, you know, we don't need to do this. Blah, blah, blah. And then we got a scan a week later because he had some other pain and you know he's got all these problems. And I found out a week later a new paper had come out on this exact issue and it's all very known and he just didn't know, he hadn't read it. You know he wasn't on top of it.

Jess Dove London: 25:23

So I guess for me, I think I remove technology and just think about problems Like what are you trying to solve? You know, and I think the hard thing when you've got a complex condition is we, historically we go to the doctor because the doctor has all the answers and has the sort of keys to getting the treatment right. Um, and it's been very difficult in some diseases, in long covert mecfs, you know it's. You know I'm so disheartened, um, when I, when turn two, came to long covert because I'd had mecfs and I thought there'd be just such a better, so many better things happening.

Jess Dove London: 25:56

And there is some, definitely there is some, but, um, so, yeah, I think for me technology is about separating it and going what is the thing you're looking for? And so I think we all know if you're looking for connection and you're looking for happiness, you know there's things that are not about technology. We know this, this, we know going outside, we know sunlight, we know talking to people, we know sleep. You know there's all these fundamentals, I think, of being a human that we people are coming back to, because there are tech products that we all use, that are more sophisticated than have ever, ever imaginable to be hijacking our brain, like and I'm not anti-tech, like I am all tech, but I, like will go away for the weekend with my kids and have no screens, you know, because I want my kids to be in nature and I want to connect and play board games and I want to have my nervous system come down, you know.

Jess Dove London: 26:53

So I think this is a move across so many people to be more intentional, and we're all vulnerable to being addicted to our phones. But I think from a health perspective, I'd probably say I'd remove some of this AI advancement and not think of it like tech. I'd think of it as tools in the toolkit, because a lot of these AI tools are probably not as addictive yet. Like you know, they're just not yet. They're not being run by an ads algorithm yet. I mean, it's probably coming, you know it is probably coming, but you know the other products we use are. You know they're being run by these different agendas.

Jackie Baxter: 27:34

I mean, that's really interesting as well. You know, it's using technology for good, but also knowing when to come away from it. I mean, one of the greatest things I've done in the last six months was have my phone permanently on. Do not disturb. You know, it's great when I'm out in the hills because I'm not being bothered by work stuff but I can still use my phone as a camera. And it's great when I'm trying in the hills because I'm not being bothered by work stuff but I can still use my phone as a camera. And it's great when I'm trying to work because it's not constantly pinging at me and dysregulating me and distracting me from what I'm actually supposed to be doing. So for me that was like the greatest hack ever. Oh my goodness, just just put it on, do not disturb. Um, you know, no one can get hold of me. It's wonderful, but, um, you know it, I, I think you know, like you said, you know nature and all these other things are so important and technology takes us away from that and bombards us over and over and over with stuff that may be useful, but if it's constantly happening, it's not good for us.

Jackie Baxter: 28:31

Um, but I also love your perspective on sort of tools, for you know, what can this give me? Because, as you say, you know a doctor, you know even a really well-educated, you know a doctor who has done a lot of research, who's really involved. Um, you know, and there are plenty of really great doctors out there they cannot read every research paper. You know there are plenty of really great doctors out there. They cannot read every research paper. You know there are not enough hours in the day, even if they try really really hard. Um, so, actually, an AI product may actually be better at finding research papers and treatment trials and things like that, but what it can't do is hold your hand, it can't take your heart rate, it can't, you know, do all of these medical tests, and a doctor can do those things.

Jackie Baxter: 29:23

Um, so it's coming back to, isn't it? What do I need? What are my needs? I mean, that's that's the whole game, isn't it? What are my needs in this moment? Do I need information, or do I need an action? Um, or probably other things too. Um, but yeah, you know, using the right tool for the job, isn't it, I guess?

Jess Dove London: 29:44

yeah, exactly, and you know, I think it's interesting. I think there will be a huge change coming where we will be using technology more and more for the tools or the easy access and the low cost testing. And you know, I know um. I met someone when I was in the us recently who has long covert and he was sharing about um. There's a, an app where you can get some specialist medications for long covert with like two, you know, a 10 minute consultation that you can book in 10 minutes, um and get like a like a really low cost sort of prescription. So, you know, I think those things are really exciting because people are just again, they've got to go through so many hoops to get access to things that they know that they should be trying.

Jess Dove London: 30:27

And I actually sometimes think, like, what is the future of healthcare? Because you know, ai is, it's so like right now, it's so good at making connections and giving you references and you know, just to give you one really really random example from last week so you know I should say this one on air, but someone in the community from another neurological condition shared a video of some technology they'd tried of a, of a vibration kind of bone conduction, um type low-cost product and it sounds really it. You know you could say it sounds very quacky and my, my son, gets a lot of night pain and he filmed himself getting muscle spasm and putting this low blow whatever, just random device. And it instantly stopped. And so I went to AI and I was asking and it's like hey, this is actually connecting to this theory in science that's actually studied in a different neuro condition. This isn't quack, this is actually really interesting. And I thought, oh, $30, we'll try it out. And we tried it out and you know, I'll tell you later. My son says it's helped. But you know, I'll tell you later. My son says it's helped, but you know, I'm cynical myself. I'm like let's just keep trying and and see if it helps. So I guess what I'm trying to say there is, you know, there those tools are going to get better and better at giving us more information, more connection. So then I think what is healthcare going to become Like?

Jess Dove London: 32:16

Imagine if healthcare was about you know the emotional, the physical, you know what you hope you could. You know if you have that experience of ever going into getting seeing a nurse or a doctor or a therapist and they're super understanding and they understand you and they're there with you and they're just like what you know, they're your sidekick of coming through things. Imagine if that was the role, more and more and more, where AI are giving these professionals all the data and the options and there's more of an openness and a curiosity versus defensiveness, because healthcare professionals feel the pressure of not knowing the answers, or they're time poor or they've got seven minutes, but it's like, hey, let's check in, let's check in all the data. There's this curiosity because they're getting more of that support themselves. So sometimes I just sit and I do in my geek nature thinking of AI and healthcare. I just think, like what is the future going to be for healthcare professionals? Because it could be the human thing, it could be the empathy, the connection, the holistic, because there's more space for it maybe.

Jackie Baxter: 33:28

Yeah, so it could be that not only does it help patients to do their own research, but actually we started this whole conversation off by saying you know, people with long COVID, me, cfs, these more complex conditions the onus is on them to kind of do their own research and take their own stuff to medical professionals and to try out their own things, and the people that are getting better are the ones that have found things themselves.

Jackie Baxter: 33:54

But if we could turn that on its head and use this as a tool to help medical professionals, they can then do the research and direct it to the patients, so the patients don't have to do their own research in the same way. You know that takes some of the burden off the patients. It also takes some of the burden off the medical professionals because they're getting some of this information a bit more easily themselves. So I don't know, I'm still a little bit of a cynic, but I totally agree with you that I think it can be helpful and I think you know maybe, like anything, you know, we can't rely on it, but it can be very useful as a tool, I guess, for gathering information and sharing information. Yeah.

Jess Dove London: 34:41

Yeah, and like pointing out, you know, if you think about how hard it is to make connections between data points, it's just something that humans can't do entirely, no matter how good you are. So you know, I had another really interesting experience with a different consultant recently where my son got a new diagnosis and I said to the doctor you know, is there any correlation? Because he has a whole bunch of different labels? And the doctor was like no, I'm not sure, and I said oh can we run a deep research project together?

Jess Dove London: 35:09

You know it's one of the features you can do and I did a reasoning model and we ran. It took 20 minutes and by the end of the consultation me and him together read through the findings and he actually was historically a pretty uh conservative doctor who's a little bit pushing back on like being curious, and it was fantastic. It was a. It was our best meeting we've ever had because he was super open-minded and he just said I don't know, there's so many papers out there I haven't read them. And it was a really positive experience versus that pushback which I know a lot of us can have.

Jackie Baxter: 35:43

Which is quite exciting, isn't it? You know when it can be then used to open people's eyes a little bit. You know, I think there's a lot of power in that, and you know you mentioned earlier, you know how siloed healthcare can be. You know you go to your cardiologist for your heart stuff, you go to your pulmonologist for your lung stuff, you go to your you know whatever ologist for your next thing, and you know so much of health care.

Jackie Baxter: 36:08

Is not these people talking to each other? Um, whereas I suppose, again, this is maybe something that technology can give us more of an overview. Um, join some of those dots together. So, rather than it being 20 different ologists, it could go oh hey, maybe these two guys should talk to each other, because there could be a link there that maybe us as humans wouldn't have seen. So again, it comes back to what can it do for us, and I think it can do a lot if it's's, if it's used well, I think you know we still remember to turn it off and look at the sun well, that's why I look at it as a tool.

Jess Dove London: 36:48

Like you don't need to go to the doctor every day, do you like? You know, you know, like. I think the thing is that, again, like the, the tools we're using, if you look at all the apps you use all the time, most of them you're using unconsciously, you're using them from habits. Or, um, you know, at all the apps you use all the time, most of them you're using unconsciously, you're using them from habits. Or you know some of the social connection, which is really great. It's just that it's you know, delivered in a way. I mean, again, like, how annoying is the Facebook newsfeed?

Jess Dove London: 37:11

Like it's like none of your friends. You're like this was like originally all my friends and now I just see cake videos. It's like the algorithm knows I like that, but, um yeah, so I guess, for me, I think of it more like tools and I think I think that's how. That's what I'm excited about. I'm not excited about, you know, making more addictive apps that are going to keep people on things for longer. I think that's just, you know, not helpful.

Jackie Baxter: 37:35

Um yeah yeah, totally mean. You know that Facebook feed is a nightmare, isn't it? And for me, understanding what it's doing to your brain, you know it's that you are never going to complete Facebook, so you will keep scrolling, and keep scrolling, and keep scrolling and you're keeping consuming all of this stuff. That is probably not helping your nervous system, but you can't stop because you will never complete it. That blew my mind when I learned that and it makes it much easier now for me to put it away. You know, don't get me wrong, I still scroll Facebook more than I should, but it is definitely that understanding of. Okay, this is literally pickling my brain as I speak. Okay, let's, let's look at panda videos instead see pinterest.

Jess Dove London: 38:21

Pinterest is my, like, my weakness. I love pinterest I I deleted face so I'm like, no, I can't do the do the cake videos, but I love pinterest, but it's the same thing.

Jackie Baxter: 38:30

It's an endless it is and and it's all like almost all of it is as well. Yeah, I hate the ads. So say tell us a little bit about the new features that you've got, because you know we talked a load last time about turn to and how this allows us to sort of get information. You know, pull stuff together, filter, what do you want? Um, you know all of this, this new feature, what is it and how could it help?

Jess Dove London: 39:07

yeah, so we at the moment have a few communities that we've launched a mobile app for and it gives people daily updates that you can tailor according to the different interests that you have um around different topics. And one of the things we have had feedback from people on is you know, people don't necessarily want to use it every day. I mean, there are a lot of people who do, but some people want to do, you know, look at updates in different ways. They like to get things condensed, they want more and more personalized and, you know, one of the things we notice is people ask a lot of questions and we hadn't really solved the issue. That's the same as in facebook groups, where people give great answers and then they can ask the same question a week later.

Jess Dove London: 39:50

And I guess over the last six months, with all the things in ai like, our mission is to speed up health breakthroughs. We've been building a few different ai products and we've brought them all together with the personal health sidekick and what this tool does is the tool gets to know you so you can sort of just voice dump or any sort of any easy way, anything that's on top for you, and then every single week it actually reads a million words for you personally. So it reads every single thing new across long COVID, me-cfs, and it will find you 12 things that are relevant to you and particularly things that are on top for you. So it's looking for that priority stuff that's current now and new connections that you might miss. It also looks at all the new research, new events sorry, that are locally or online and it also matches you to trials because there are new trials coming out all the time. So that's the one thing. And what it also does is it does a deep dive. So we have like a data set. Every single day. We we're building a bigger and bigger data set on long covid and mecfs and it's on pay, it's from patients, experts and research.

Jess Dove London: 40:54

Again, that's what we believe that the answer doesn't just lie in the generalized information or just in the research, and so this tool will go and it will read, it'll look through the entire data set of hundreds of thousands and it will pull out. You know 10 things patients are saying, 10 things experts are saying in 10 recent papers. So it's again. We actually don't believe that the end. We should give vanilla answers to health questions. So let's say you were saying you know, you know example someone asked this question today. You know, should I use probiotics to reduce flare-ups? Or you know, whatever the question is, you know, do you want the answer? You know you do want an answer, but there is maybe not one answer for that question, so they could be well.

Jess Dove London: 41:36

These are the people. This is what the studies have shown. The studies, studies have shown xyz for this population. Here's what patients are liking, not liking. Here's what a person last week shared, an expert shared on a podcast.

Jess Dove London: 41:48

So we really emphasize human experiences and everything is referenced, and so we just have made it a non-generic tool because, again, I don't believe they're a generic. We don't have that. If we make it generic, we lose all the human stories. So that's what the tool does. And, yeah, this is our low cost AI product. So when you look at all the, there's a bunch of amazing AI tools out there, like open AI, that you can pay for, and this is a low cost product.

Jess Dove London: 42:17

So it's one of our commitments is to give this to patients. So it costs $2 a week, actually costs us more to generate it because we're using AI credits and it will get cheaper and cheaper. But we also have scholarships available, because we really want to democratize and give people these tools of the power, like having someone else, someone, something else. Read all of the research for me every week and just give me what I need. That's, that's the, that's the hope of what this can you know? If that's something that people are wanting and needing, you know. We hope it. It's pretty early, it's only just gone. Lives as early days for us?

Jackie Baxter: 42:55

yeah, and you know I hate talking about money. It is a a factor, isn't it? You know we can't not talk about money and you said you know that actually your product is costing you more to generate than you are charging it for. But you, you know, you still need, in order to be able to offer that, to get money in in the same way that a practitioner or a doctor has to be paid for their expertise, in the same way that a practitioner or a doctor has to be paid for their expertise. And you know we can hate that, all we want, but it is a fact of life. So I suppose it comes down to value for money, doesn't it? That doctor that you really want to see? Is it worth the money that they're charging? You know that course that you want to do. Is it worth the money? And you know your AI product? Is it worth the money? Is it worth $2 a week to get some of those bullet point answers, to get some of that done for you? And you know that's a question that only the individual users can answer, I suppose, but it's. It comes back to what can it do for you, isn't't it? If it's going to save you a ton of time and effort and energy and, you know, give you some of that information more easily, then maybe it is worth it. But I also like the idea that it doesn't give you like a yes or no answer, because you know, as you say, healthcare isn't a yes or no answer.

Jackie Baxter: 44:18

Everyone is different. You know long COVID and ME-CFS. Recovery is each individual person's journey and their own jigsaw puzzle. So what works for person A isn't necessarily going to work for person B in the same way. So it's kind of you know. Okay, you asked a question. Here is all the information. Some of it is positive, some of it is negative. Some of it will say yes, some of it will say no. Some of it is positive, some of it is negative. Some of it will say yes, some of it will say no, some of it will say maybe, some of it will probably say the sky is purple. But you know it's having all of that information at your fingertips so you can then make that informed decision, I suppose. Isn't it? You know, and I think you know that's what's so important, isn't it?

Jess Dove London: 44:58

Having information so you can then choose your path 100, 100 and you know, I think, um, you know, I'm just, you know, truly want to give people more and more of these tools. And the reason we've made it like, the reason it costs us a little bit more, is just because AI is just, we're trying to build at the front of what's possible, and what's possible at the moment is getting lots of agents to work for you. So, all these, what is an agent? It's just like a, you know, like a, if you imagine. It's like just a little intent, like a piece of programming. Which job is to read every paper for Jackie every week? You know, and it's got a, it can call, it can do a few little tasks. It can't do that many. So maybe it can go to google and search trials and open pages and read criteria and go yes, no, and then open the next one, and it can do that 300 times for you, um, so that's that, that's you know what. What we're trying to do is give people the power of those pieces and, um, they just they're not free. You know, this is the thing. When you are crunching all the number, crunching all of that data, it just, um, you know it costs, it costs, it costs money to use ai, and that's the other thing. The hard thing is, you know I, you know we, I personally pay for the premium. You know open ai because it the reasoning. They're amazing, you, you know, and it's you know, $30, $40 more a month for those tools and I think for me it's worth it. I use it all the time but I think many people wouldn't and they wouldn't even know how to use it in the way that you can always, because it does take so much time and practice to learn how to use these tools. So, yeah, we think that there's just going to be more and more opportunities and more and more companies or, you know, organizations popping up giving people these tools of like doing jobs, saving you time, helping with diagnosis, understanding results, more. It's a very exciting time.

Jess Dove London: 46:54

Obviously I'm a clear optimist. I think it's again from having a period of my life when I had no tools, no validation. You know I had a doctor who told me to take Panadol for my ME CFS. You know that was my lived experience when I was like what is going on? Like I didn't know about pacing. No one even had told me about pacing till after I recovered. I had to like find out about pacing just by living, destroying myself, you know, like by not knowing you know what a flare up was because nobody told me. So I guess I'm just so optimistic about people being more empowered, more and more and more empowered. But, like you said, over the last 10, 15 years has been, the crazy thing is, all of this technology has come with this overstimulation and all this impact on our nervous system. So it's this really funny thing where we're gonna have all the power, but all that power is also, can you know, be very unhelpful for our day-to-day life if we don't know how to use it, knowing when to use it and when to not?

Jackie Baxter: 47:57

yeah, um, one final question. You mentioned that a lot of the reasons why we don't maybe get the answers we want from AI is because we don't know how to ask the right questions. Are you able to give like I don't know like the 30 second version of how to ask the right questions or how to ask better questions?

Jess Dove London: 48:25

yeah. So if you're using like a chat, gbt type experience, like that chat can do so many things for you. So you could say, go and create a table, help me edit this piece of writing, give me brainstorm ideas like it can do so many. It's just incredible. It can do so many things with written word and now with images and tables and all these different things. And so when you're looking for health information, you know, my recommendation would be to say can you reference everything that you share, or tell it the type of referencing you want, like I'm interested in information that's recent. Like give it the parameters and then, if it starts giving you an answer that doesn't do it just change, just say it again like you know, no, no, I actually don't, I'm not interested in that, I'm actually not interested in that, and it would just stop and it would change um. And then, and if you can use the reasoning models, yeah, the results are very, very interesting. Um, you, you know some of them. They're very good. So I think that that's the challenge is, you need to know and you know historically, you know, maybe six months ago they'd say or a year ago, say, you are a leading, you know long COVID specialist and you know you could see you could literally say that and this is the case. I'm going to give you the case, I'm going to give you a bunch of documents and I want you to give me an answer in reference, but always say give me referencing. That would be my number one advice if you're asking health questions. But I honestly I can't. I trust I do have so much trust for AI now because I've done so much testing.

Jess Dove London: 49:59

You know, on the weekend my son had a lump on his mouth and I took a photo and my husband was like he'll be fine, like let's see the doctor on Monday. And I asked Chachi BT and it was like looks like an abscess. You need to go to the dentist in the next like three hours. And so I rang the dentist and they're like we can't see you, but we'll just give you antibiotics. We went in the dentist, had a look and was like you need a, he needs emergency dental surgery. Um, and I was like thank you, chachi bt, because you know it's really dangerous and I was gonna call a helpline. You know there's these helplines that you can call and I just thought they're not gonna see a photo and give me data, like it gave me just like referencing, like because I asked her to.

Jess Dove London: 50:39

So, um, yeah, you know I'm I I'm a real optimist because I just am using it all the time. But, uh, you know, see, put photos in, put docs, but maybe, maybe, just make sure you've clicked. Another pro tip would be just make sure you click. You can't train on your data so you can go into the settings and you can click. Do not train on my data and you know, if you, if you are using medical documents, just remove your personal identification. But again, if you're using the big models, you're a lot safer. I think it's when there are these other groups out there that I'd be more nervous about with my health data yeah, absolutely, that's a great tip.

Jackie Baxter: 51:17

Thank you so much. This has been really interesting. I feel like I've learned tons. I still remain a cynic, but I am, I think, more open than I was. Um, so thank you for that. Um, I will make sure to put all of your links um to the product, to the new product, to everything else, into the show notes, so, if you are interested in trying it out, go and have a play with it. Um, it's kind of fun. So, jess, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been really good chatting and lovely to see you again thanks, jackie.