Healthcare x Intuition x Story

Some medical professionals spend time and energy to better understand patient intuition.

Intuition can be difficult to define.

After spending hundreds of hours in hospitals such as Penn, Stanford and UC Davis to support parents fighting through kidney rejection/dialysis/transplant, Stage III/IV Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and Triple Negative Breast Cancer, amongst other things, I recently thought about how I can share stories that others can relate to in the hospital setting.

I'm not a doctor but am always thinking about how experience can help people with the most difficult times in their lives. I focus my attention on consumer hardware and software in the hospital room because that's what I can do to help.

I want to know how photos, music and other software can be optimally mixed and customized per patient type, and maybe even per patient, to help them recover better while sitting in the bed hoping to get out of that room, hoping to change the hospital stench to "jasmine from the Japanese Tea Garden" vs. "jasmine incense in the room", to "the beautiful smell of my home" vs. "what did my home last smell like?"

I want to know how to better bridge from analog to digital. After all, with enough time spent in hospitals, one gets tired of hearing the never-ending ring of the red light attached to the bed. I can cancel out the noise with my earbuds now but how do I hear something that helps me recover better during my stay or "hospital journey."

I want to know that if I end up in that damn bed again or see a loved one in that bed and nobody can visit in person, that somebody has developed a program, application or software that ties into the user's phone, watch, tablet, etc...something much better at optimizing the already difficult experience in the room.

I had the privilege of spending hundreds of hours in hospital rooms with a unique patient, my father, who had no immune system and battled some of the most difficult conditions and infections...he had Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) at a young age. Between 35 and 40 years old his kidneys failed, he began peritoneal dialysis and he was placed on the kidney transplant wait list. It would be years until he had a chance to get his kidney but the day finally came before he turned 40 years old...

It was 1992, we were living in a beautiful red brick house in Wilmington, DE situated on 1 acre of forest with a creek that could be heard from the backyard. He would wake up at 5:30 am, go to work, come home and do his peritoneal dialysis. He never missed little league practices or games and always found time to play catch in the front yard, from 3 years old to 18, Pre-School to 12th Grade...He was committed to family like nobody I've ever seen before.

In the red brick house, in the kitchen...the landline rings. He picks up the phone. The doctor says:

"Mr. Doyle, can you get to Penn Hospital in the next 24 hours? We have a kidney for you."

He was shaking with tears down his face. As a 7-year old I became concerned...I tugged on his pant leg and asked him "Dad, are you ok?"

He replied "Yeah kiddo, I'm getting my kidney!"

Soon after, we packed up our stuff for a weeklong stay, drove 30 miles north to Philadelphia, and checked into Penn Hospital so he could get the organ that would set himself up for 25 more beautiful years on earth. He would no longer need to do dialysis and would have more energy to use and spread moving forward.

He had a successful transplant from a deceased donor, who happened to be an elderly woman with no history of alcohol consumption. In other words, a really healthy kidney. At the time, the average lifespan of a kidney from a deceased donor was approximately 14 years. He got it to last 25 years!

How did he do it? How did he get +11 years? Did he intuitively maneuver the colds, flus and ailments with a weaker immune system due to the immunosuppressants? Did he detect these things early, adjust his nutrition and exercise differently based on how he felt or, more importantly, how he "felt he was going to feel?" What are the best queries from Doctor to Patient that AI can analyze in order to get an accurate read on the patient's feel that they are going to feel something? What are the optimal response variables?

He would utilize the old-fashioned methodology of sweating fevers out by bundling up and shaking it out. He would eat things like vegetables and rice and limit protein consumption. He rarely ate things that were too fatty or filled oneself up too much. He knew not to get too full. With this said, if it was time to "go in" we quickly got ourselves to the hospital for care.

Many people from the Blue Zones of the world "eat to 80% full" or "don't overfill one-selves" or "eat in modest portions".

His diet, nutrition and consumption habits were similar. Kidney patients often experience constipation and have trouble with bowel movements. In this day and age we seem to fill ourselves to 120% capacity and wonder why we're getting inflammation like never before. Flow is important from both a digestive system standpoint and a cognitive standpoint, and they often play off of one another.

He also fed off of our successes growing up in the household...3 sons: a musician, a space cadet and an academic/baseball player, as well as an incredibly supportive and energetic Filipina wife.

Music would resonate throughout the house every week, from heavy metal, rock, hip hop and jazz to The Dead, Led Zeppelin, Boston and did I mention The Dead? Yeah...we grew up in a Deadhead's household, which was amazing! Jerry mannnn ... Jerry!

The space cadet would work hard in school while dominating on Nintendo or on computer games. I like to tell him he learned everything from my Mario skills! He would disagree wholeheartedly. He is now studying aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech after completing active duty for the US Air Force.

The academic/baseball player is me...I went on to study Economics at Yale, played on the varsity baseball team and worked primarily in the Sports, Entertainment and Education worlds. I spent a lot of time helping teams build and optimize systems, people, teams, and communities through Education and Sport.

His wife, my mom, raised 3 wonderful boys into men, was recently diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer, completed chemotherapy, completed her double mastectomy and his still riding strong with her positive, energetic and contagious spirit. She powered the household and provided the strength to persevere.

So maybe his intuition developed as a product of what he was energized by, what drained him and what inspired him? Maybe his intuition developed because he experienced such broad exposure to highly differentiable elements through the toughest times of life, the times that, when he reverted back to the hospital 25 years later, he remembered. Maybe the strength and energy of the woman by his side was all he needed to have confidence with his "intuition."

Maybe one day MyChart can be coupled with a Golden Model of Qualitative data, an IntuitionChart, that supplements all of the core and key data doctors rely on. A reliable dashboard with minimal manual inputs/time to update would be ideal. The hard part is identifying what qualitative data is missing and needed to better understand the patient.

We have biometric feedback that ties into our dashboards today. What would an IntuitionChart look like and how would it function if it consolidated and simplified all of the key data points that might help doctors moving forward?

How can we get a more accurate response from a patient if asked

"do you recall when you began to have a feeling that something was not right?"

"Where on the body did that originate?"

"How confident are you with your memory and recall?"

"Did you notice a change in your gait before it was measured by your watch?"

"Did you notice anything else different about your speech"

"When speaking to people, did anybody ask you to repeat something or say that again?"

"Did you experience any sudden onset of stress and didn't know where that came from?"

Flashforward to the year 2054...

I'm in the hospital bed.

I put on my goggles or I don't have goggles but I have A/V in the room.

The "machine" plays an optimal mix of music based on my current status.

The "AI" selects photos based on my local region, starting with nature that's right outside my window and ends with my household. (linear algorithm)

A short video plays that reminds me of what I can accomplish when I get back Home. (inspiring short-form video)

I relax more, I develop more drive, I develop more confidence.

I think I can smell the Jasmine from the Japanese Tea Garden and it's linked to the last good smell of my Home.

My Intuition Dashboard gets updated.

I recover, reenergize and get ready to spread positivity once again.

I want to go Home.

I'm more confident I'll make it out of this room.

I get to go Home.

I'm Home.