Charlotte Blease

Yeah, and I would say, Eric, I don't want to fall into this kind of false dichotomy of either or camps here.

I mean, the book is a very provocative title in some sense, but basically what I'm trying to do is say what are the problems with current medicine

traditional medicine to which AI could potentially be a solution or might not, thinking about the status of current AI.

But yeah, Jen Lawson is a patient with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome who, through a series of problems with her health, loses her medical insurance.

She has a very serious fall.

She loses her health coverage and basically eats into her pension fund.

in order to cover her health costs.

And as we know, that's not a very uncommon story.

So what I do is I open it up with her to discuss not only the financial barriers to care, which sometimes even get hidden when it comes to thinking about universal healthcare, healthcare free at the point of access,

so to speak, is going to be a solution to some of medicine's woes.

It will be for some patients.

But what I'm trying to say is there are multiple barriers, even given the fact that, say, she's able to get access to care because she has to rely on her elderly mother to drive her across state to see a specialist at one point.

it's very uncomfortable she has to pay out of pocket in order to do that because realistically she can't rely on the on the the budget uh options that would be covered and she's basically got a whole series of obstacles that prevent her from having comfortable access to care and then i say you know with telemedicine some of the challenges were eradicated and um

she was able comfortably to access some doctors, you know, with pillows behind her and all the rest of her, where she can sit comfortably.

But Jen suffers from sort of, not just sort of the literal barriers to care, but figurative barriers too.

She discusses some of the biases that do kick in that make it more difficult to see patients with extra needs and to make them comfortable

And I use that as a vehicle and as a way to discuss the challenges for doctors and nurses and other people to multitask and to do things to make.

But ultimately, she exemplifies, to cut a long story short, the inverse care law.

That is, for the people most in need, there are more barriers to getting access to bricks and mortar health care.

Yeah, so basically the book follows the trajectory of the traditional medical appointment.