[jackstraw14]

I know what you're talking about, and the last lab results I got contained more data than I've ever seen before on one of those things. There were one or two results outside of the normal range, which my doctor addressed with me directly, and now everything is mostly normal.

Are you saying that the doctor failed to take action on something that was at a concerning level on her labs? Or that she should have scanned her labs for anything that was on the edges of those normal ranges?

I generally agree that more data is a good thing, but simple blood work can be kind of a large amount of data now that's not immediately recognizable to the average person. However, this is exactly the case where I want more assistance with AI... there's simply too much data for me to reliably tell what's meaningful and what's not anymore. AI can process a bunch of data and tell me what I need to know in about a second or two.

[nytesky]

I have stopped looking at my lab results because all it does most the time is caused me extreme anxiety.

I have a rare disease which causes an obscure blood marker to basically jump two orders of magnitude.

If you google this jump marker, basically all the links you find are about a deadly leukemia that you will be dead of in six months.

My appointment with my doctor was two weeks away. Those were very very dark two weeks.

I definitely think you should go over the results with your doctor, but Google or even ChatGPT is not a doctor

[jackstraw14]

Wow, I'm glad you figured it out and I bet those two weeks were hell. With anything health related, I think information found online and information from AI tools should just be considered helpers toward determining something more specific that you can address. I certainly would not vouch for all AI assistance, and you shouldn't just give more weight to an AI system more than an article from a supposed expert necessarily. But, if you know you are working with good tools (like Claude Sonnet, which I would recommend for this particular case we're talking about) they shouldn't steer you too far in the wrong direction. Claude specifically has been the gentlest, most helpful general assistant I've ever had, but I don't ever lose sight of the fact that these are simply tools helping me, a non-perfect human with a lot still to learn, and I wouldn't recommend using them as any kind of "authoritative" solution, just something that's about the best help I've had with this kind of stuff so far. The final decision should be between you and your doctor.

[p_ing]

> Are you saying that the doctor failed to take action on something that was at a concerning level on her labs? Or that she should have scanned her labs for anything that was on the edges of those normal ranges?

From the post that her doctor hadn't yet reviewed the labs and the turn around time for the doctor was 2 - 3 days. I'm naturally curious about my own results so I do look at them and search the WWW for the meaning of the results if the lab tech doesn't provide any contextual clues. If WebMD says I have Lupis and I'm going to die tomorrow, then I'll reach out to my doctor in some form or fashion.

> simple blood work can be kind of a large amount of data now that's not immediately recognizable to the average person.

You'll find every [common] blood test has descriptors on the Intertubes from a variety of sources. Insurance, in the US anyway, isn't going to allow niche complex tests without going through weeks of denials. And even when doing standard blood workup, you're not going to need to know the items in the green, just the one or two out of range.

You're of course free to allow AI to invade your medical records as you see fit if that is the way you want to go about it. My point above was that "AI" wasn't necessary nor revolutionary in respect to identifying the author's medical issue.