AI in Healthcare: One Physician’s (Kinda Scared) Journey to Get Up to Speed

Full transparency: AI (and AI in healthcare) makes me a little (quite?) nervous.

Mostly in the I’ve seen the movie I, Robot and Will Smith was not okay kind of way. The capabilities, the implications, the pace…honestly, I find it unsettling. So if you’re a physician and you feel the same, you’re not alone.

But here’s the thing. AI and AI in healthcare isn’t coming. It’s already here. And ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, it just means we’ll be playing catch-up later when the stakes are even higher and the learning curve is even steeper.

So I decided to do something about it.

Facing the Fear (Lululemon Bag Style)

The OG Lululemon bag used to say “do one thing a day that scares you”. I’m not exactly a daily overachiever on that front, but AI qualifies.

Full disclosure: I’m not a tech person. Easily frustrated, easily lost, definitely the person Googling “how do I do the thing” more than I’d like to admit.

But I didn’t want my discomfort (read: fear) to be the reason I fell behind on something this significant – especially when it’s going to directly affect how I practice.

So I used Claude (yes, an AI, to learn about AI – the irony is not lost on me) to build a 4-week personal learning curriculum tailored specifically to my needs: foundational AI literacy, AI in healthcare, where Canada stands on guidelines and recommendations, and where things might be heading.

The constraint? Everything had to be audio-based so I could listen during my morning commute. Audiobooks on Audible. Podcasts. No screen time required.

What Claude Built in 30 Seconds

In under a minute, I had a fully structured, week-by-week curriculum – two audiobooks, a curated list of podcast episodes from multiple sources for a balanced perspective, and a clear progression from fundamentals to healthcare-specific applications. It even organized it into a formatted PDF at the bottom of this post.

Could I have done that myself? Eventually, sure. But likely nowhere near as fast, and almost certainly not as thorough. It’s kind of amazing. That right there is the case for AI as a tool – not a replacement, but a way to get more tasks done effectively, in less time and doesn’t require your MD.

I started Week 1 this past week. First recommendation: The Coming Wave.

Got through the first two chapters and promptly returned to being scared. 🤣 Progress?

Why AI in healthcare Matters for Your Practice

Whether you’re just finishing residency or you’ve been in practice for years, AI in healthcare is going to touch your work – probably more than it already does.

AI scribes are already in clinics. Diagnostic tools are improving. The administrative grind that wastes physician time is exactly the kind of thing AI is built to eliminate. This is likely going to be a heck of a lot more than a 1% win in the end (even though I still love those).

I’m not here to tell you AI is all good or all bad. I don’t know yet. But I’m learning, and I’ll bring you along as I go – what’s useful, what’s overhyped, what it actually means for how we practice.

Head in the sand isn’t a strategy. Let’s figure this out together.

The 4-week AI curriculum PDF is attached below – prompt and all.

This is the personal curriculum PDF that AI (Claude) generated:

And this is the (very basic but achieved the goal!) prompt I used:

Please help me create a personal curriculum for better foundational knowledge of AI use and applications in healthcare. Specifically, how AI is and will be used in individual doctors practices as well as some mindset around AI. Curriculum should be 4 weeks in duration, 3 hours of learning per week. This should consist of audiobooks and podcasts (as all of this will be done while driving). Where possible, Canadian perspectives and experiences are preferred. Create a pdf with the final curriculum. Ask me any other clarifying questions you may need.