What My Mom Taught Me About AI

What my Mom Taught Me About AI?

As I reflect on the last few weeks of attending some of the nation’s most exciting health tech conferences, a concern lingers: change is coming to healthcare, but the industry is not ready for it. The buzzword on everyone’s lips is AI, with the potential to revolutionize patient care and transform the industry as we know it. While most speakers acknowledged this potential, many seemed to indicate it is overhyped. I did not hear many discussions about the need for proactive leadership to ensure that the AI healthcare era emphasizes preserving the best in healthcare—the human essence—while moving away from the worst aspects of healthcare.? And the focus often seemed as much on efficiencies as re-inventing patient journeys. Given the risks of applying AI to the wrong issues, with the wrong integration with workflows or even the wrong ethics, the need for inspired leadership is high. Ironically, although I have a background in AI initiatives and healthcare, it is my mom, in her twilight years, who taught me the most about the need to realize this potential.

My mother, an arts-and-crafts-minded kindergarten teacher, was what we call a "slow adopter" in the tech industry. Having grown up in an era with limited technology, she harbored a healthy disdain for it, but nonetheless couldn't evade its influence. When I was a teen and assembled a clunky, barely functioning robot kit, she was far more impressed by its cuteness than its programming capabilities. While I progressed in my tech career, she patiently endured my soliloquies on the exciting potential of technology to transform our lives. During my college years of computer science study, I frequently extolled to her that she would be fortunate in her old age, as technology would allow her to lead a life that previous generations could only dream of. With robots to assist her, self-driving cars, and computers to keep her healthy and connected, her life would be transformed beyond recognition. Despite my enthusiasm, her eyes always suggested she was not entirely convinced.

As the decades passed, I found myself standing in front of audiences, giving technology presentations here and there. Eventually, my speeches evolved into an annual "Tech Trends" talk for a local non-profit that gained community popularity, attracting hundreds of people. In the sea of business people, tech-savvy hipsters, and seasoned technologists, one attendee always stood out: my proud, aging mother. Despite being out of her element, she cheered me on, clapping the longest and loudest at each of my predictions. Granted, my mother's comments after each event were focused much more on my jokes than the amazing tech changes predicted, but I knew she would appreciate the predictions some day as she saw them unfold.

Fast forward to 2020. The Tech Trends prediction event had gradually disappeared from the scene after a great run of 20 years, as the sponsoring organization ramped down. My octogenarian mom was fighting the memory loss and other realities of aging in an assisted living home. My optimistic “when you're old…” forecast had yet to come true for her. As a technologist who had now refocused my career on health tech innovation for seniors, I had insights into many tech innovations that could make my mother's life more comfortable. Alas, no software tool or gizmo clicked with her. Email and social media were as aggravating to her as fingernails on a chalkboard. Tapping at her tablet became an exercise in futility as her fingers rebelled against the touchscreen and her mind resented the seeming lack of logic to it all.? Why tap on an X to close a window when you should be able to simply thump it? I even tried a voice assistant solution, and a monitoring robot, but both were non-starters. Then, I went all-in and got her an AI-driven robotic dog that barked, wagged its tail, and learned from her interactions. Sure hit, right?? Nope. After a mere ten minutes of watching it, my dog-loving mother politely asked me to take it out for a walk - forever.?

As her memory faded, my primary connection with my mother became sitting together at her table in her assisted living room, doing puzzles.? My once talkative mother no longer carried on extensive conversations, and much of our time was spent in silence, although she would laugh victoriously when she beat me to placing a puzzle piece.?

Then came COVID. As the COVID-19 era descended upon us, I found myself cut off from visiting my mother in person due to new restrictions. No longer could we sit face-to-face, and even waving through the window was a challenge due to her hearing difficulties. As a tech-savvy individual, I was again stumped about how to bridge this new physical gap. But then, a wild idea struck me one day while getting my mail from the mailbox: what about sending a handwritten letter? It felt old-fashioned in this digital age, but I had a hunch that the personal touch of a letter on paper might somehow connect.? It would at least be something that she could look at, even if she wasn’t able to really respond.

So, I picked up a pen and a piece of paper, and I wrote to her. I explained the pandemic in simple terms, included silly pictures and poems that I knew she loved, and hoped that it would bring a smile to her face. To my surprise, a few days later, I received a letter back from her in her own handwriting. It was deeply expressive and indicated she had absorbed and enjoyed everything I had shared.? I couldn't believe it! This was a breakthrough. We had found a way to communicate that didn't require email, social media, good hearing, AI or even a battery!

Over the next nine months, I sent her a letter nearly every day, and received nearly as many back from her. Through our postal-based messaging, we were able to connect in a way that was energizing and meaningful. The mom I remembered from her earlier years was coming back, with her wit, humor, and deep observations shining through more in every letter. It was a reminder that sometimes, the simplest solutions can be the most effective.

One day, I received news that threw our communication a major curveball. My mom tested positive for COVID and was quickly relocated to a senior COVID unit some 25 miles away. As per the protocols in place at the time, the family was not allowed to visit her in person. Additionally, we were informed that she was quite disoriented, likely from the jolt of her change of routine and not understanding the move. Sadly, we realized that my mom’s hearing aid battery was not moved with her, making her technologically advanced hearing aid inoperable without it.

Unfortunately, soon after we heard more bad news. Mom had attempted to get out of bed and had taken a fall. This was particularly rough news for me as a health technologist innovator. I knew that falls are often a health trajectory shifting event for seniors. I also could not help but think of avoidable problems.? I had seen firsthand? a number of fall prevention technology innovations emerging from startups at national health innovation conferences, including some with AI, but none had yet evolved to be a standard approach everywhere.

The facility was overwhelmed, making it very difficult to get through to staff on the phone. There were no portals, text updates, or any other common methods of communication easily available. I didn't blame the facility, though. They were focused on saving lives, not on deploying technology. I was left to worry about her state of mind, no visits permitted, no technologies to connect us, unsure if my postal letters were getting through.?

Soon, a breakthrough came.? I gained a commitment for a brief moment of time to see my mother through a 1st floor window room.? I drove to the facility and walked around to the back of the building for the window rendezvous as cold rain drizzled down. A worker helped Mom up to the window, positioning her in a chair to look outside. I yelled through the window, but Mom couldn’t hear me. She looked like she was in pain and confused. I held up a message I had crafted for her on my tablet device, but her wavering gaze did not seem to follow it. Determined, I enlarged the tablet font to a massive size, but as I did that, for some reason the tablet quit altogether.??

Out of my frustration came a flash of inspiration. I ran back to my car in the parking lot, grabbed a big black marker from the trunk, and raced back through the rain. Back at the window and breathless, I pulled out a letter in my pocket from one of her grandchildren. With my marker I hastily scrawled a giant heart across the envelope and held it aloft. A tired smile crossed Mom’s face as she saw it,? just as assistants came to move her away from the window and back to her bed. As they did, Mom turned to look at me for one last brief second. She met my gaze and held her hand to her heart, a classic kindergarten teacher and mom move. I had thought that no form of communication could be more low-tech than a marker and paper, but Mom had one upped me with her impromptu sign language.

The nurse looked back out the window and saw me standing outside in the grass, alone in the rain, holding the envelope with the heart on it. She motioned to me, and at first I thought she was angrily gesturing for me to leave.? Then I realized she was pointing at my letter, and to an external door at the back of the building 50 yards away.? I moved through the wet grass to that obscure door, and soon the nurse appeared. She nervously glanced around once more, then popped open the door, likely breaking every protocol in the book.? I noticed tears were streaming down her face.? “I’ll get it to her” she said, grabbed the letter, slammed the door shut, and disappeared before I could say a word.??

I headed home, back to wonder and wait. The following evening I received a call just after midnight. Mom had suddenly taken a turn for the worse, and we would now be permitted to see her in person, the severity of illness granting exemption from the rules. My wife and I jumped in the car and sped back towards the facility. I had a car with an AI-assisted feature that I took pride in because it could legally navigate “hands free” by itself through a notoriously tricky "S-curve" on the local highway. However, on this drive as the AI technology automatically slowed the car’s speed to accommodate the curve, I was simply frustrated with its limitations.? I turned off the feature, put my hands on the wheel, and pressed down hard on the gas pedal for the rest of the journey, overriding the AI.

We arrived at the hospital soon after, finally able to go inside. It was eerily empty and quiet in the lobby, and for some reason, it felt like we had stepped back in time to the 1970s. An exhausted-looking nurse greeted us, accompanied us into the elevator, and then broke into tears as we ascended. Between sobs, she informed us that Mom had passed away just minutes earlier. The nurse shared that she had held her hand as she passed, alone with her.

My mother lived a wonderful life, full of laughter, family, friends, and teaching. She taught me a valuable lesson in her final years. The best technology in the world is meaningless if it doesn't meet the right? human need.? And patient journeys have a lot of human needs.? I had failed to anticipate the right use cases that would have served my mom well in her senior days, all those years ago when I had naively predicted the happy future of aging to her.

Throughout my career, I have seen and created a lot of impactful technology solutions with the help of great teams that have often improved people's lives. However, in my mother's final days, even human-centered design principles and Moore's Law breakthroughs failed us. In 2020, the state of the art in technology, such as the AI dog, monitoring robot, advanced hearing aid, sophisticated electronic communication, tablet devices, automated driving and so much more fell short. The best human-centered design work of my career was a marker scrawl and envelope. Mom one-upped me with a hand to the heart. And the human tears of those two separate nurses she encountered in her last couple days were the best unstructured data I have ever leveraged - providing me with the proof points I needed to be at deep peace that Mom did not pass alone with no one at her side caring at the end.?

I have been very interested to watch the rapidly advancing Artificial Intelligence capabilities and predictions of the changes they will bring.? Many leaders significantly underestimate the looming healthcare patient journey impact in my view.? AI will displace an astonishing number of jobs in the decade ahead. And we know AI can do a decent job of reflecting or mimicking some version of humor, empathy, and compassion. ? The unanswered AI question in my mind is will we collectively let AI accidentally displace and trample away true human experiences such as the tears of caring those two nurses cried in the last days of my mom’s life?? Because at the end, that was about all that was meaningful on the home stretch of her final health journey.? Here’s to all the committed technologists working to keep humanity front and center in hybrid collaboration with the tidal wave of AI coming at us.? Now we need healthcare leaders to jump in with them, while there is still time to influence the path.?

Postscript: A few weeks after that last visit, we organized a? celebration of my mother’s life, virtually bringing together family and friends across the nation and continents, using teleconferencing, social media, and digital media. Technology came through brilliantly for the celebration, and there were no glitches.