The Informed Patient’s Guide to AI
How to Understand, Question, and Use AI in Your Healthcare
By Sarayah Obonyo, MSIM
ISBN-13: 979-8174655973AI is already being used in healthcare, whether patients realize it or not.
It may be used to write clinical notes, review medical information, support decisions, communicate with patients, or power tools that patients use themselves. But most of the conversation about AI in healthcare is happening around patients rather than with us.
I wrote this book for the everyday patient who wants to understand what is changing without having to become an expert in artificial intelligence.
It explains what AI is, where you might encounter it in healthcare, what it does well, where problems can arise, and what you can ask when it is being used in your care.
What’s Inside
The book covers some of the most common ways AI is being used in healthcare today, including ambient AI and clinical documentation, decision-support tools, patient-facing AI, and the growing use of tools like ChatGPT for health information.
It also looks at the parts of the conversation that matter to patients: accuracy, bias, privacy, consent, medical records, and what happens when an AI system gets something wrong.
There is also practical guidance for patients who want to use AI themselves. The goal is not to tell you to trust AI or be afraid of it. It is to give you enough information to make informed decisions about how you want to use it and what you want to ask when someone else is using it in your care.
You do not need a technical background to read this book.
The Informed Patient’s Clinic Companion
The book also has a free printable companion for patients.
I created the Informed Patient’s Clinic Companion for the part that happens after you understand the technology: sitting in an actual appointment and figuring out what to ask.
It includes questions you can use when AI is part of your care, including questions about documentation, privacy, consent, accuracy, and human review.
You can save it to your phone, print it, or bring it with you to an appointment.
The Clinic Companion is free. You do not need to buy the book to download it.