During the past five years, I have survived three life-threatening illnesses, and I joke that I now have enough physicians to field my own baseball team. That experience forced me to become much more involved in understanding my own medical care.
About a year ago, in August 2025, I began experimenting with ChatGPT as a healthcare aid. I am still learning, but it has gradually become an important part of how I manage my medical information and communicate with my physicians.
I do not use ChatGPT as a substitute for a physician. I don't ask it to diagnose me or decide how I should be treated.
I use it as my medical information advisor, interpreter, organizer, and preparation assistant.
There is an important distinction.
I don't treat ChatGPT as a sophisticated version of Google. I don't simply ask isolated medical questions.
ChatGPT and I have conversations.
I give it context. I provide laboratory reports, imaging reports, physician notes, medications, symptoms, previous medical history, and changes that have occurred since my last appointment. Then I ask it to explain what those facts mean, compare new information with previous information, identify questions I should ask, and help me prepare for my next physician visit.
Over time, ChatGPT and I have assembled what I call my “Master Medical File.”
It is not an official medical record. It is my working medical history containing my major diagnoses, procedures, medications, laboratory trends, physician recommendations, important dates, and unresolved questions.
I also keep copies of my records outside ChatGPT.
Much of this requires manual work. I download reports from patient portals. I upload laboratory results and imaging reports. I copy physician comments and reports from specialists. My records are scattered among hospitals, physicians, patient portals, PDFs, and computers.
But I have reached a simple conclusion: no one has a greater interest in organizing and understanding my medical history than I do.
Each physician understandably sees one part of my medical life. My cardiologist concentrates on my heart. My oncologist concentrates on my cancer history. My ophthalmologist concentrates on my eyes. Each physician has limited time and may not have every report from every other specialist immediately available.
I am the only person who is present at every appointment. I use AI to help me connect the pieces. A recent experience with my cardiologist illustrates how this works.
I had a regular cardiology appointment on August 5. Before the appointment, ChatGPT and I prepared a concise written medical summary for me to hand to my cardiologist.
My communication with physicians has changed considerably since I began doing this. Instead of depending upon my memory while sitting in the examining room, I give the physician a one-page summary explaining what has happened since my previous visit, my current symptoms, relevant test results, medications, concerns, and the questions I want answered.
After my August 5 appointment, my cardiologist ordered a cardiac CTA.
When the CTA report became available, I downloaded it from my patient portal and gave it to ChatGPT. The report contained terminology that meant very little to me when I first read it.
ChatGPT translated the radiology language into something I could understand. We went through the findings. I questioned anything I didn't understand. It helped me distinguish the important findings from the incidental ones and helped me prepare a concise note to my cardiologist using appropriate medical terminology.
The CTA raised a potentially important question, so my cardiologist ordered a transesophageal echocardiogram, or TEE, to investigate further.
Within about a week, I was in the hospital having the procedure. When the TEE report became available, I again downloaded it and gave it to ChatGPT.
We went through that report together until I understood what appeared reassuring, what remained uncertain, and what questions I should discuss with my cardiologist.
Then, before my next appointment, ChatGPT and I prepared another one-page briefing.
There is an important part of this process that sometimes gets overlooked.
By the time I walk into the examining room, I understand the document I am handing my physician.
I don't blindly give him something written by AI.
ChatGPT and I work on it together. I question statements I don't understand. I correct facts or wording when necessary. I ask it to explain the medical terminology. Sometimes we revise the document several times.
My cardiologist obviously knows that this medical terminology did not suddenly become part of my everyday vocabulary.
That doesn't matter.
What matters is that I understand what I am giving him and that the information is accurate.
This has noticeably changed my office visits.
The physician does not have to spend much of the appointment reconstructing several months of my medical history by asking, “How have you been feeling?”
He does not have to depend entirely on what I happen to remember at that particular moment.
I am less likely to drive home and suddenly realize that I forgot to mention something important.
Instead, the physician can read my summary in a minute or two and spend more of the appointment discussing the important issues with me face-to-face.
But I think there is an even more important benefit.
I have become a much better-informed patient.
Medical reports that once would have been nearly meaningless to me are now documents that I can discuss intelligently with my physicians. And the real power of AI, at least for me, is not simply answering today's question.
It is retaining the context surrounding tomorrow's question.
A new laboratory report is not just another collection of numbers. It can be compared with previous laboratory reports. A new cardiac test does not have to stand by itself. It can be considered along with previous tests, symptoms, procedures, medications, and physician comments.
Before an appointment, I don't have to reconstruct six months of medical history from memory. ChatGPT and I can review what has happened since the previous appointment.
That continuity is enormously useful to me. I think this may also point toward one of the important roles AI will eventually play in healthcare.
Much of the discussion about medical AI concentrates on whether computers will diagnose disease or someday replace physicians. That may be interesting, but it is not what interests me most about my own experience.
I see AI improving the interface between the physician and the patient. A patient with a capable AI assistant can arrive at an appointment better prepared, communicate more accurately, understand complicated medical reports, remember the important questions, and make better use of the limited time available with the physician.
For people dealing with aging, chronic disease, several specialists, complicated medications, or simply the desire to remain healthy and independent, I think that represents a significant opportunity.
The physician remains the physician.
But AI can help the patient become a far more knowledgeable and effective participant in his own healthcare. For me, that has become ChatGPT's greatest medical value.
It isn't that ChatGPT knows a great deal about medicine. It is that ChatGPT helps me understand my medicine.
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