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Show Notes
ChatGPT and AI are hot topics right now, but how can they be used in health care? Today, we talk with Dr. Harvey Castro and delve into the intersection of technology and healthcare, and we explore the ways in which it is changing the landscape of medicine. Dr. Castro has an amazing grasp of the ways that AI can be used to assist patient care which should leave you excited for the future.
In this episode, you will hear:
- AI is intelligent in the way that we use it – and the more we play with it, the more we will understand it.
- The ways in which AI can serve medical professionals.
- Amplifying patient care with AI.
- Bias in AI and utilizing it in the real world.
- Creating a GPT for underserved communities.
- Limitations to AI in healthcare.
- The importance of taking intentional time for yourself.
Dr. Harvey Castro is a physician, healthcare consultant, and serial entrepreneur with a wealth of experience. He is on a mission to increase awareness of digital health and drive positive change in the field. With his extensive background as a CEO, physician, and medical correspondent, he brings an innovative, unique perspective. He has developed healthcare apps, consulted for top healthcare companies, and written medical publications, all in pursuit of his passion for helping others succeed in the digital health sector.
Connect with Dr. Harvey Castro:
Website: www.harveycastromd.info
Book: www.chatgpthealthcare.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveycastromd/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/harveycastromd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HarveyCastroMD/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveycastromd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/harveycastromd
Connect with R Blank and Stephanie Warner: For more Healthier Tech Podcast episodes and to download our Healthier Tech Quick Start Guide, visit https://www.healthiertech.co and follow https://instagram.com/healthiertech
Additional Links:
- Shield Your Body website: https://ShieldYourBody.com
- Shield Your Body Youtube Channel: https://youtube.com/shieldyourbody
- Host R Blank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rblank9/
- Shield Your Body on Instagram:https://instagram.com/shieldyourbody
Transcript
Dr. Harvey Castro 0:00
If you had the billion so that you could do the research, so you could create the database, I would go on aside here and say, why not create a GPT for the underrepresented. So race, income women, whatever is underrepresented, just create that database and focus on that database and then actually create a GPT for it. And then now you have a GPT that is more customised for your needs that are going to be specific to help you even better.
Announcer 0:27
Welcome to the healthier tech podcast, the show about building a healthier relationship with modern technology. Now, here are your hosts R blank and Stephanie Warner.
R Blank 0:40
So Dr. Harvey Castro, in this conversation we cover, it’s just a it’s a super hot topic right now, we talk a lot about chat GPT in the context of health care, but really, it is more about artificial intelligence in general, in the context of healthcare, we get into what it’s being done now, where it’s going in the future, some of the limitations and some of the concerns around it. It’s I really appreciated him coming and sharing all this knowledge.
Stephanie Warner 1:09
Yeah, absolutely. But I want to say to our listeners, this is not I you know, I went into this thinking we will be talking about the you know, I would that I would feel a little like apprehension about using chat GPT and those sorts of AI protocols in medicine. But I’ve left this conversation, feeling really excited about the opportunities. And I think Dr. Castro has a really great grasp of the ways that this stuff can be used to help patient care. And that to me is super exciting.
R Blank 1:39
Yeah, and I’ll just say to the listeners, getting Stephanie to change her mind is is is an accomplishment. So that speaks further to Dr. Castro. Let’s, let’s let’s get into it. Yeah, let’s do it. Today, we delve into the intersection of technology and healthcare and explore the ways in which it is changing the landscape of medicine. Our guest is a physician, healthcare consultant, and serial entrepreneur with a wealth of experience. Dr. Harvey Castro is on a mission to increase awareness of digital health and drive positive change in the field. With his extensive background as a CEO, physician, and medical correspondent, he brings an innovative, unique perspective. He has developed healthcare apps, consulted for top health care companies, and written medical publications, all in pursuit of his passion for helping others succeed in the digital health sector. Welcome to the healthier tech podcast, Dr. Castro.
Dr. Harvey Castro 2:35
Awesome. Forehead, I really appreciate being here. This is awesome. Thank you.
R Blank 2:41
Yeah. Okay, so to kick us off, I’ve heard you talk about the need to have a strong why. So I’m wondering What’s your why? And well, why is it your why?
Dr. Harvey Castro 2:55
I love it. Love it. I honestly think that for me personally, that’s the base of what I do, and why I keep pushing and pushing and pushing and doing stuff. My personal why it comes from a really humble beginning. I grew up in New York City in poverty, many times to know if I was going to have food and didn’t know, actually what food stamps were I thought that was regular money, because that’s what we had. And I remember going to the grocery store asking my mom, what why is this different? Is that like from another country or what? And she never really explained. And growing up, do you know food lines getting milk and cheese. And that gave me what I call a strong wind meaning I did not want to be there ever again. And so from childhood till now and even now I’m still pushing and still writing more books. And each time I tell myself, Okay, I’m gonna stop creating companies. I have two more companies coming. And I literally have this conversation with my wife. I’m like, Okay, I promise I’m done. I’m not doing any more. And then I started working on something. I’m like, Man, I really want to do this or that and then I ended up starting something else. That’s cool. But I think it’s that strong. Why that keeps pushing me to keep going. Yeah, no, I
R Blank 4:06
get it. You were in New York.
Dr. Harvey Castro 4:08
I grew up in New York City. Exactly in Rego Park that’s in Queens.
R Blank 4:12
Okay. My parents are from the Bronx. Okay. Yeah. So we had a guest on just just a few episodes ago, actually in Episode 44, Thomas Helfrich. And he was the conference, that conversation was about AI. And his opinion is that AI isn’t actually intelligent yet. So I’m wondering what your thoughts are.
Dr. Harvey Castro 4:35
That’s a good one. I guess it all boils down to how philosophical you want to be and how you want to define intelligence. You know, is it regurgitating? Probably, yeah. Is it as a really just a fancy equation, if you boil it down, probably, but for our use and how we’re using it. I personally would say yeah, it’s it’s intelligent in the sense in how I’m using it. And then we can go into the philosophical part of it. But but the way I see it is I have a problem. I use chat up t as a mentor in a way. And I know that sounds weird, but I use it as a mentor slash brainstorming session. And I feel like I’ve done enough in my life that I can say, Okay, I call BS on this one. Yeah, this is actually a good idea. And I literally call it my mentor. I just have fun with it and ask questions. And so if for some people be like, Wow, that sounds pretty intelligent. And some other people like now he’s just regurgitating what somebody else already said. And how you look at it.
R Blank 5:31
I say that about humans too, though. You said it’s about how you use it. How do you use it? And more generally, how do you think AI can be used in in healthcare?
Dr. Harvey Castro 5:45
You know, I honestly think the more we use it, the more we understand the good, the bad and the unknown. And the more we play with it, we realise, huh, that question didn’t work. But if I ask it a different way, that work, maybe I should ask it this way for this particular problem. And how I see it in healthcare, obviously, it’s in beta, it’s new, you know, they just released the next update for Chad GPT. And, and here’s the beauty what I see as a problem today may not be a problem tomorrow, because it’s learning from everyone’s mistake, and it’s actually getting better. The other thing is, if tomorrow open AI opens up, no pun intended, and says, Hey, we’re gonna download every medical bookstore that we can get a hand and all that knowledge, and we’re just gonna dump it into the model, then overnight, the platform has changed. And so how I see this use, will it be ChaCha BTW, I see it as the following. All of us remember a codec and I’m going to date myself. And all of us remember a Kleenex. And what I’m getting at is it’s all brands. And so just because you say Kleenex may not be what you have in front of you, but you call it a Kleenex. And so my point is with chat GPT I feel like since they were the first ones to open, no pun intended again. But they opened it up and everybody’s playing with it. Fast forward a year, two years, three years people, it could be Bard, it could be Google, it could be your product, who knows? People will call it chat up tea, because that was the introduction, and it just stuck. And that’s what I think. And so how will it be used in healthcare? I personally don’t think it’ll actually be changed up to is talking about it as touch up tea, just because I’m not going to go into the weeds. Yeah, and explaining, but I honestly think it’ll be something like bio GPT. Or maybe someone right now is creating the healthcare GPT equivalent, that it’s going to have all the bells and whistles in healthcare, and it’s going to address all the issues with with the hallucination and all the bad stuff. So how do I see it being used? Actually, I think it’s going to be amazing. In my word, as the doctors are going to replace me, not really not at all. But I know there’s that fear of the unknown, which obviously, I get it, it’s brand new, it’s taken over so many things in our life that people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow this thing down. I don’t want it to replace me. But to be specific to health care. For one, one of the biggest challenges as a doctor, I’m an ER board certified doctor. And you can imagine how much data I have to read and keep up with and so much information. And that’s why I exist as an ER doctor and as a generalist, because if I had to learn everything, there’s no way I could learn everything and know everything. And so doctors have found a little niche and say, I love this, and I’m going to learn everything. With chat GPT, it’s going to give me or GPT equivalent, it’s going to give me the resources to keep up to date. In the future. I do see this as me opening up my email. And instead of being in spam, I can go on a website, and it’ll tell me what I need to know for emergency medicine, what the latest articles and I know those are journals and podcasts. But instead of having all this healthcare products when I have one database that I can just get fed. And I know. And then obviously, if I don’t have enough time to consume all that information, and I’ll give you a real life example, I’m an ER doc, I’m a human being. at two in the morning, I may be exhausted, and I may not be at my best as if I had slept all night and I’m ready to go. And as a patient, that’s not your fault. That’s my fault. But that may be the system’s fault. My point is this. How nice if I could type into chat CBT and say, Hey, patient comes in with x and y and in the future just gives me a probability of all the different things and what things I could be thinking of. Is it replacing me know? Am I an idiot? No, I’m just using technology to make me a better doctor of more efficient doctor. Yeah. And so go ahead. No, no. And then the last thing I know I get on my soapbox, sorry. The last thing you know I, we always talk about, you know, doctors are looking down typing, typing, typing, looking at the clock typing typing in. I don’t really talk to the patient. And it’s almost like they’re not spending time. And so two things are going on. Doctors being burnt out because they have all this administration stuff to do and it’s all this big load to see more and more and more. And then patients are getting ironically, worse care and it’s getting worse and worse. And then doctors are retiring early. The leaving medicine and guess what now those doctors that are still in have to work even harder because other guys cheeping out so fast for what’s going to happen to our health care level. I mean, I mean, what can happen? So in my point, it’s like, you know what, let’s educate patients on increasing our level of education and health care. I some kind of chats up to equivalent and I literally wrote a book on an algorithm to kind of help you get to that point. And then let’s help doctors because I thought, how embarrassing if a patient comes in, knows all the stuff about Chachi Beatty gives me all this stuff. And I’m like, What is Chuck GPT? Never heard of it? How credible in my answer. You’d be like, Man, I changed doctors. This guy doesn’t even keep up with the latest and no fall to the doctor. I mean, I’m buried in books. I know sometimes my wife’s like, really, you’re not following the news? And I’m like, No, my news is you tell me what’s out there. And I need to know. And that’s my news. Like, I’m so focused in my medicine. And as your news GPT. She is my news TPT. Like, honey, if I really need to know, I’m sure you’ll tell me that I need to know. And if I live in, in a weird box, like, It’s my life, it’s okay. Like, I like being in this little bubble that I’m just here, like, do I want to hear of all this? Horrible things that are happening? Probably not. But if you want to share, go ahead, let’s let’s talk about it. But that sounds weird. But there’s just so much information. I mean, I know you guys, today, if I said how many times have you had a push notification or a call or a text? I know it’s been already midday or more, I would say you’ve had at least 10 or 20, at least. And so think of all that noise coming in. And on top of that, I’m trying to focus on patient care. So. So going back to health care, I really think this is the future, I think things are gonna get automated, to the point where you and I are having this conversation. And ironically, I did have my AI trying to transcribe everything I’m saying, but put it in a patient application. What if it’s just recording everything? And I don’t have to type anything? And what if it’s just making summaries, and it’s showing me what the data is and the probability and instead of me focus on typing and all this administration? What if I could just take that time and now enjoy having been a doctor? Yeah,
Stephanie Warner 12:18
I absolutely love the way you’re talking about this. Because when I first you know, thought about this, and using AI like this in, you know, in a doctor’s office or in medical, I was like, Oh, another place where people will go to get information like Google, like, oh, I have a headache, what could it be, you know, but the way you’re talking about it, it’s like using it as a tool to really amplify traditional like patient care. And I love the idea I so love the idea of allowing the doctor to listen and ask questions. And you know, have that patient interaction. So the way you talk about use in the future, I think is really exciting. And I’m so glad that you shared your your thoughts on that. But to step back, just to like now to current, can you give us any real world examples of how AI has been successfully integrated into healthcare now?
Dr. Harvey Castro 13:13
Yeah, you know, one of the first fields that it literally jumped in, and nobody, I don’t think even complaint is in radiology, AI is helping reading X rays, finding out more abnormalities, finding cats. In the CAT scan findings, I was just talking to a colleague, and he was telling me that there’s the CT angio, is basically the blood flow to your brain. And it’s CT and angio, meaning vessels. And basically all it is is they push a little fancy dye into your veins, and then it goes into your brain and they can take a CAT scan and see the flow of your your circulation in your brain. So if you had a stroke, or if you have an clots around your neck that’s causing you to have stroke, what’s amazing, I don’t know the name of the product, I’m not promoting, I’m just giving you the facts of how this works in healthcare. And so it literally is looking at the images before the radiologist is reading it. And if it finds anything abnormal, it’s sending a text to the ER doctor saying the AI has found something report hasn’t come through but something’s abnormal so that the doctor knows like holy crap, this guy needs to be on blood thinner instead of me waiting another 30 minutes. Let me just put them on blood thinners. Let me jump on this. Let me let me look at things a little bit harder now. And I think Wow, amazing. Now, I haven’t verified this. I know somewhere I saw something about X rays and CTS. One of the common things we see in CTS is, oh, there’s a nodule in the report and like it’s probably benign, just repeat the study in a year. Well, there’s this AI now that is looking at these nodules and saying no, that’s early cancer.
R Blank 14:46
Yeah, I read I read that and they the article I read said that the programme at least that the article was about is capable of diagnosing cancers tumours for years before they would otherwise be diagnosed off of the same x ray
Dr. Harvey Castro 15:00
I get chills. I’m like, wow, this is amazing. And so, you know, AI, I know sounds scary. But in those instances, amazing, because again, to my earlier product problem, we have so many doctors leaving the profession and don’t and patients are getting less and less. We need something, you’re hurting bad. And my biggest worry is, you know, obviously, when we had COVID, people were dying in the ER, because too many people were coming in and just didn’t have enough manpower. I’m worried that if we’re not careful, that is going to be the norm. And that worries me I am blessed that I’m a doctor. And it sounds horrible. I’m I can self diagnose. And I can be like, I probably shouldn’t be doing this or that, and I can take care of my family. And, and I joke that when I’m 80, you’re gonna find me in a nursing home in a patient’s room helping that patient, because I’m gonna still be doctoring. But I can get away with stuff that the average person can’t because I can call the doctor if he takes care of an alum. Like his care, I’m like, Dude, come on, like, I know XYZ and, and I can call them out on it was I Oh, you know, the analogy is when a doctor sees a lawyer coming through, like, Whoa, I gotta be really careful. Because this guy’s a lawyer, I won’t be sued.
R Blank 16:11
Yeah, no, I think you’re touching on a lot of aspects of modern healthcare in the United States, but before and apart from AI that are creating these pressures. But in other parts of the world, there are under very large, underserved areas. Another example I was reading. I don’t know if it was this week or last week, but people are expecting a lot of promise around AI to be able to offer health care services in large parts of Africa, for instance, that don’t have doctors available. And so there, there are a lot of, of, obviously, a lot of positives. On the flip side, right? I’m wondering what maybe some of the implications are regarding disparate outcomes based on key demographics such as race and income. I mentioned episode 44. Earlier, and in there, we talked about how AI is naturally limited by the nature of data it’s based on as well as the natural biases of, of the programmers, and there are multiple instances of of biassed AI and, and the data. So if we’re using this if we’re using the data, like if we’re building data off of the real world, in the real world, according to Blue Cross up to 60% of our health is determined by zip code. And Multiple studies have shown that black patients have had their complaints and symptoms dismissed their pain under treated and are referred less for specialty care. And just today, actually, I read an article about a new study published in JAMA cardiology, showing that quote, black and Hispanic adults in the US are less likely than white adults to get statins, medications that prevent or treat common forms of heart disease. Now that that’s just a couple of examples. What can we do? Or what should we do or what is being done to try to prevent these same biases from being translated from the real world and thus, the data sources into the algorithms?
Dr. Harvey Castro 18:19
Love your point. So let me backtrack just for some people that may not understand fully. So basically, the problem is, data in good or bad is data come out. And so if I’m putting data in I, let’s just say, Where’s the money’s at so let’s say there’s all this money into breast cancer and who they’re studying, they’re probably studying Caucasian women in certain population, but they may not be funding other research that is more prevalent in a certain different population. And let’s just say African Americans and Hispanics. And so if there’s not data being accumulated for these other diseases that are let’s just say they collected compared to other diseases that have been more prevalent in a different race, then in theory, your health care now is focused on certain diseases and More money’s going into those diseases, and other diseases have been neglected. And then on the prevention medicine side, to your example of a statin, if certain populations are not being taught that, hey, you need to be on this medicine or educated, then they won’t be on that medicine and I that can be extrapolated to less life years and worse lifestyle. And so how to fix this problem. I’m gonna take a big sigh on that one. I honestly, I’m hoping there’s a billionaire or Elon is listening. We need money. We as a society
R Blank 19:42
hates AI, doesn’t he? Actually he
Dr. Harvey Castro 19:45
funded open AI and he did hmm. Okay, then he actually will go on the side real quick on that one. And the skinny is he funded it with the idea that it was going to be open AI and that no corporation would have access to this. Mmm I’m just a company called Microsoft. So the rest is history. So actually, Elon on his, he’s actually in the process of creating his own GPS. Of course, it’s interesting, but it’s kind of even more scary because he also has robots. And so now you got robots.
R Blank 20:18
Whoa, yeah. And spaceships and satellites. Yeah. And
Dr. Harvey Castro 20:21
then putting chips in your brain. So I’m like, Well, I’m not there yet.
R Blank 20:25
Yeah, let’s look for another billionaire to support. Yeah, but what would what would the money do? What money is fuel? Once?
Dr. Harvey Castro 20:34
Again, I’m gonna get shot for saying this. But in theory, if we had money, I mean, obviously being Hispanic, a minority, it would be nice to fund these diseases to take time and look at the data and see what things are not being funded due to race. And do I know that sounds racist, actually. But how can we make it equal so that other populations are being represented?
R Blank 20:58
But again, it’s not just race. I mean, race is a is a common one, but for economic income is a huge one.
Dr. Harvey Castro 21:06
Yeah. And so if I had billions and billions, and actually, you probably don’t even need that much. But if you had the billion so that you could do the research. So you could create the database, I would go on inside here and say, why not create a GPT for the underrepresented. So race, income women, whatever is on the represent, just create that database and focus on that database, and then actually create a GPT for it. And then now you have a GPT that is more customised for your needs that are going to be specific to help you even better.
R Blank 21:39
So how does how does chat GPT differ from maybe more traditional machine learning algorithms in in the healthcare field? Well, actually, does it differ? And if so, how?
Dr. Harvey Castro 21:52
See, honestly, I my analogy is I feel like this is like a shotgun. And they made this product and it’s just going everywhere. They’re using it for marketing. They’re using it for science or passing law degrees. All this stuff, medical degrees, but wasn’t meant for it now. And so I think it’s, I’ll use me as an example. I’m really good at a lot of stuff. And it’s emergencies. But I’m not really deep in a lot of stuff. Because I’m only good enough for your visit to the ER, make sure you’re alive. Make sure identify the emergency and then make sure I get you to the next level which is to specialists of x or y. And so same thing with GP to chat GBT, I feel like it’s really good at a lot of stuff. And some stuff is so good that you’re like, Man, this is preeminent expert over here on this thing. But in reality, it may not be that good because you’re not an expert. And ironically, you’re asking a question from Chad CPT, because you don’t know. And so it’s really hard for you to call BS on it because you don’t know yourself and you’re asking and you really Oh, yeah. Sounds good to me. I’m sure it’s correct. And so that’s the part where I transitioned to hallucination. Just because I have this fancy MD behind my name doesn’t mean anything. It just means that I know medicine, but does it really mean that I can put anything into chat up to call BS? Unfortunately, not. The reality is, I can call BS on emergency medicine topics on things that are my specialty. And I feel really comfortable saying I can call BS on that. But can I call it on paediatric cardiologists and a certain procedure? Fine on I can honestly say, oh, yeah, that looks good. On a medicine side, it makes logic. But if I talked to a real paediatric cardiologists will look and be like, dude, now, you don’t know this space. We don’t even do that.
Stephanie Warner 23:32
That’s, that’s really interesting. And it makes me kind of wonder, too, you know, we start we start talking about using like, a GPT type of a type of product, or app. How do we, you know, it makes me think of HIPAA, and how do we ensure privacy and the security of patients personal and medical information?
R Blank 23:53
Yeah. And also, yeah, if you could talk about explain what HIPAA is.
Stephanie Warner 23:58
Oh, yeah, sorry. And, and
Dr. Harvey Castro 24:01
so, depending on what part of the world you’re at, in the United States, we have this thing called HIPAA and just to break it down, it’s just simple privacy laws to make sure that me as an individual, it’s not my privacy rights are not being violated, meaning my name, my social, my address, but believe it or not, there’s 18. identifiers. And can you ask me for all 18? No, I, I always forget a few. But one of them, it could be your IP address is violating. And then the other one that I thought was fascinating is, God forbid I died today. My medical information is protected for 50 years after I’m dead. So that’s how serious they take this information.
R Blank 24:37
Interesting. What we’re just wondering what the basis for that 50 years is,
Dr. Harvey Castro 24:41
oh, no, I wonder if it’s got to do with people that are famous. Oh, did you know this person had this disease, you know, and then they just died and the family members like crap, it’s out there. Yeah, that’s I don’t know. I’m just making up but I mean, I would think that’s part of it. Okay, yeah. So, back to how can we protect HIPAA and accomplish the mission? Another side, I think, on the front end and the back end of patient experience that can be used and there’s not really a worry for, for HIPAA because the software can be created in such a way that it never touches that information and never interacts meaning. I can feed in like 50 year old Caucasian male with diabetes, hypertension, blah, blah, blah, and then give me a care plan. And it gives it to me, but at no point did I give your phone number address particulars history. Now if I’m like, Oh, Mr. Smith, I was here today. And I put it into chat UPTV. And man, that’s a that’s a huge fine coming to me. And believe it or not, no insurance company will cover any HIPAA violation. So you’re out that’s cash. So and it could be jail to so it’s really serious here in the US. So how to do it?
R Blank 25:59
I have been how do you jail? A, an AI? I?
Stephanie Warner 26:05
I would think it’d be the maker at that point. But
R Blank 26:07
what if an AI made the AI?
Dr. Harvey Castro 26:10
I’m sure you wouldn’t do that? Okay. And that’s one of the terms and conditions that you’re not allowed to use on the chat UBT. But it has been thought. So how to do it. This is how I think I would tell companies to do you don’t need a shotgun to go to the fight. You may need something minor. And my point is, I think there’ll be a GPT equivalent for a healthcare system under their own HIPAA compliant servers. And I think there’ll be a virtual world in the sense that me as a doctor, when I log in with my particular login, it’s specific and protected. And then there is the playground where a child CPT or equivalent can talk to me and help me and I don’t have to worry. But that machine will live under the server of that particular system. And it’ll never go back to the mother company, which is open AI. It’s,
Stephanie Warner 27:05
I think, I think it would kind of have to because you I mean, I would be weary we’ll say if I saw it was you know, Mehta, MD hit, like,
R Blank 27:15
anything with metal. Point. Yeah. So what what to your view are some of the, I mean, obviously, we’ve discussed there’s a lot of benefit right now, there’s a tremendous amount of potential in the future. Are there? Are there obvious limitations that you see in the model things that AI can’t do or will never really be able to do? That’s, it comes to health care?
Dr. Harvey Castro 27:43
Yeah, I love that question. I literally just wrote an article about a month ago, and I talked about the human touch, I have gone into patients rooms, and I get on the nurses never to call me by my first name, not because I need to be called doctor or not, because I need the initial none of that. It’s because I believe in that, that authority in the sense that when you go into a room and you see that clean white coat in the presence of a doctor, and they talk to you and say hey, things are gonna be okay, and you say with conviction, and you’re there and you’re empathetic, that power and that touch of talking to a patient is so strong, and so therapeutic that it’s almost like that placebo effect where you say things are gonna go well and all sudden you look up and their blood pressure is going down the heart rate is going down there actually are getting better. And so my point is can a computer or a really fancy robot at forgive you that I’m gonna fair I never say never, but I don’t think that’ll ever be the case ever. Because as a human being you have that empathy for another human being. And that’s really hard to fake unless you make a robot and convince the human that it’s really not a robot. And you tell them it’s a human and you lie to them, and maybe they’ll believe it. Made it
R Blank 28:58
so pardon me getting back to so we started with this interview with with a question about your personal beliefs. And I know another one of your personal beliefs is the importance of not getting distracted especially like by things like Facebook and Netflix and you brought up push notifications earlier in this interview. Can you share with our listeners some of your own personal behaviours or practices as it comes to your tech use in order to reduce distraction?
Dr. Harvey Castro 29:34
That’s a good one another pause another deep breath No, I struggle with that one and my wife gets on me it’s just like Harvey you’re all over the place to like my mad scientist going here going there and and getting distracted and like did I say squirrels are ready. I’m just kidding. But how I honestly deal with it when I have to do a task and I have To my mind, I try my best to always carve out hours in a day that it’s a node, everyone, except for my wife and kids, if they need me, obviously, I’m there for them 24/7. But I literally will put my phone down, I will turn off the notifications on my computer. And if there’s anything that still pops up, like LinkedIn will still pop up, and I will close that browser. That way. It’s just me, and whatever I’m working on. And I tell my wife, hey, I’m working on this love. And if you need me, call me but just know that I’m like, focus. Because sometimes my brain is so focused on like, in another world, she’ll come in and I’m, like, just so so focused, she’s like, are you mad? I’m like, no, no, my brain is just like, I’m intense here. I’m, like, really like pouring into this. And, you know, I’m having like, break for a second and just kind of come back. Just give me a second. And it’s funny. We have these conversations, like, Hey, you seem so upset. I’m like, I’m not mad. I’m just so focused, because I’m trying to like tune everything out. And just really be intentional. Because think how many times we get an email notification, like, this morning, friend of mine added me to a 30,000 journalists email and send a blast to them all over the world. And so today, I’ve had like five or six emails, text, different things to be on TV shows today and tomorrow. And it’s highly distracting to get to the point where I told my boss, I’m like, Hey, if you need me great, but just know that I may be cut here and go over there. And like, literally after this, I’m meeting with a radio show to talk about eye infections and whatnot. So anyway, to answer your question, focus, turn everything off, stay on task schedule, make it intentional, and make it a routine out of it. So you know that from x to x time, this is your time that you’re gonna work. And then also make time for yourself. You know, I always talk about, you know, I know I tend to be a workhorse and I want to go go go. But there’s times. I’m like, You know what, I’ll tell my wife. I’m like, I’m going for a walk. And it sounds crazy, but I just need a little walk. I need some air and he I need to take some time for me. I’m like, Hey, you want to go see the sunset together? Let’s go for a walk. Because you need to have that intentional time for you know, yeah,
R Blank 32:07
no, I totally agree. And for me, I mean, I tried to take it in the evening also. But for me, it’s really early in the morning, and I take like three hours and I take my time I do my exercises. I make breakfast, everything’s quiet. And it helps me get oriented for the day. If I wake up and have to get straight to work. I go nuts. Yeah, but I appreciate you sharing all those tips. Dr. Castro this, this has been a wonderful interview. I really appreciate you taking the time to come join us here on the healthier tech podcast. The book is called Chat GPT and healthcare and is available on Amazon. The link is in the show notes. Dr. Castro, where else would you like our listeners to connect with you?
Dr. Harvey Castro 32:52
I’m on all the major social media. So LinkedIn is kind of where I like living, but I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and I made it pretty easy for everyone. It’s literally Harvey Castro, M as in medical D as a doctor. And that’s my handle. And you’ll find me everywhere. So some of
R Blank 33:09
those things. And we’ll put those in the show notes. So thank you once again, go enjoy talking about eye infections next on.
Stephanie Warner 33:17
Yes, it’s been a great conversation. Thank you. Yeah,
Dr. Harvey Castro 33:19
no, thank you guys. You guys. were awesome. You guys really did a good job. So I appreciate you guys. Thank you.
Announcer 33:26
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the healthier tech podcast. Remember to check the show notes for all the links and resources mentioned in the show. Please like and subscribe to the healthier tech podcast on Apple, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice. Get your free quickstart guide to building a healthy relationship with technology and our latest information at healthier tech.co
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
