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From $100k and 30 Hospitals to AI: How One Person Took on Diagnosing Disease With Open Source AI

Ever feel like your health journey is a puzzle with missing pieces, scattered across different doctor’s offices? Imagine spending years and a small fortune trying to figure out what’s wrong, only to be met with more questions than answers. That’s exactly what happened to one individual, and their story is pretty eye-opening. After countless appointments, racking up a $100,000 bill, and visiting over 30 hospitals, they decided to take matters into their own hands by building an open-source AI tool. Yes, you read that right.

The Frustration is Real: When Healthcare Feels Like a Maze

For five long years, this person wrestled with a bunch of vague, unsettling symptoms. Think about it: injuries popping up way too easily during regular workouts, feeling like recovery was in slow motion, and then there’s the random waves of fatigue and nagging joint pain. It’s the kind of thing that just drains the life out of you, right? So, naturally, they did what anyone would sought help. They went down the traditional medical route, exploring everything from standard treatments to those cutting-edge, experimental protocols you hear about at longevity clinics. They tweaked their diet, overhauled their exercise routine, and even became a sleep schedule devotee. But nothing seemed to click.

Here’s the kicker and maybe you’ve felt this yourself, the biggest frustration wasn’t just the lack of a diagnosis. It was the system itself. It felt… disjointed. Each specialist they saw seemed to be operating in their own little silo. The orthopedist focused solely on the joint pain, the endocrinologist zoomed in on hormones, and the rheumatologist had their own set of tests. Nobody, it seemed, was stepping back to look at the whole picture, the complete symphony of symptoms. It was like everyone was analyzing a single instrument in an orchestra and missing the actual music.

Then, a turning point. A rheumatologist finally looked at the combination of symptoms and genetic test results, suggesting an autoimmune condition might be at play. Finally, a direction!

Open Source AI to the Rescue? The “Aha!” Moment with GPT

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Before this rheumatologist visit, just out of curiosity (or maybe desperation?), this person decided to feed all their symptoms and prior medical data into a large language model – GPT. And guess what? It pointed towards the same likely diagnosis the rheumatologist later suggested! Talk about a moment of “wait, seriously?”. This experience sparked something. After sharing this story, they found they weren’t alone. Loads of people were out there, stuck in the same boat – drowning in fragmented medical histories and chasing elusive diagnoses. That’s when inspiration struck, and the idea for an open-source AI tool began to take shape, aiming to help anyone facing similar situations.

Introducing the Open Source AI Health Detective

So, what exactly did they build? Well, it’s an open-source tool designed to help make sense of your medical records. Think of it as a personal health data organizer and analyzer. And the best part? It’s available for anyone to use! Keep in mind, it’s still in the early stages, but it’s already functional and showing promise.

Let’s take a peek at what this tool can actually do:

You can see the project and even contribute on GitHub

Need to Gather Your Medical Records? There’s a Tool for That Too.

Let’s be honest, getting your hands on all your medical records can feel like another hurdle in itself. If your records are scattered across different hospitals and clinics and not readily available as digital files, don’t worry, there’s help for that too. The creator recommends checking out Fasten Health. This open-source project is designed to help you fetch your records from hospitals and healthcare providers, especially in the US. It aims to make it way easier to gather your entire health history in one place, which is a crucial first step for using the AI tool effectively.

What’s Next for this AI Health Project?

Right now, the user interface what you see and interact with is ready and open source. The part that handles parsing documents is currently running on a separate Python server behind the scenes. But the goal is to bring everything together so the entire tool can run completely locally on your own machine. This is a big plus for privacy and accessibility. Once that migration is complete, the updated code will be added to the GitHub repository.

This whole endeavor is pretty inspiring, isn’t it? It highlights the power of Open Source AI Tool and community collaboration to tackle real-world problems, especially in areas as personal and vital as healthcare. If you’re curious, have questions about setting up or using the tool, or even want to contribute, you’re encouraged to reach out and get involved. It’s stories like these that remind you how much innovation can come from personal challenges and the desire to make things better for everyone.

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