Fien De Waele Tongeren, Belgium 1H AGO

I use ChatGPT to help me prepare for appointments with the healthcare professionals who already follow me, especially when several conditions or symptom patterns overlap. I have recurring neurological symptoms as well as diabetes, and I am followed by different professionals. The difficult part is often not noticing that something has changed. It is deciding which changes are relevant, which clinician is the right person to tell, and what information will be useful during a short appointment. Before an appointment, I give ChatGPT the questions and observations I have collected. I ask which details are likely to matter most to that type of specialist, which questions belong with my neurologist, GP, endocrinology team, or another professional, whether I am missing information that would make the situation easier to assess, and which observations are background information versus points to mention early in the consultation. The useful part is prioritization. I might arrive with ten observations, and ChatGPT helps me reduce them to the few that are most relevant. Occasionally, it promotes a detail from “somewhere in my notes” to “mention this near the beginning because it may deserve investigation.” When an appointment is still weeks away, I sometimes use ChatGPT to design a small, temporary tracking routine. Instead of logging everything, I might record three specific parameters in the morning and evening, or note the time, duration, circumstances, and possible trigger whenever a particular symptom occurs. This gives me a compact record to bring to the clinician instead of relying on memory. The division of roles stays clear: I provide the lived experience and observations, ChatGPT helps organize and translate them, and the healthcare professional interprets their medical significance and decides what should be investigated or treated. As a result, appointments become less about reconstructing several weeks of symptoms from memory and more about giving the clinician a concise, usable picture of what has actually been happening. Step-by-step: 1. I collect my questions and observations before an appointment. 2. I give them to ChatGPT and ask it to identify the details most relevant to the type of specialist I will see. 3. I ask which questions belong with my neurologist, GP, endocrinology team, or another healthcare professional. 4. I ask whether any information is missing and which observations should be mentioned early in the consultation. 5. I reduce a longer list of observations to the points most relevant to the appointment. 6. If the appointment is still weeks away, I use ChatGPT to design a small temporary tracking routine, such as recording three parameters in the morning and evening or noting a symptom’s time, duration, circumstances, and possible trigger. 7. I bring the compact record to the clinician, who interprets the medical significance and decides what should be investigated or treated.