MEDICINE WITH PURPOSE

Artificial intelligence should not replace but rather aid doctors, said experts at THE WEEK’s Health Summit

- ANJULY MATHAI

Neha became a critical care nurse at Aster CMI Hospital in Bengaluru because she was inspired by her mother, also a nurse. The bedtime stories she was told were different from those of other children. “Sometimes she would take me to the hospital and the patients there were like family to her,” said Neha.

Now Neha can say the same. “We think about our patients even at night,” she said. “If they are going back healed, then we are the happiest. We pray that they never come back to the ICU.” Sometimes, from her heart, she finds herself praying for her patients. At hospitals, she says, more prayers are said than at mosques or temples. “We have seen the needs of patients [at close quarters],” she said. “I have learnt the value of a life….”

Neha’s story was a short film that was played at THE WEEK’s second Health Summit held on October 25 at The Ashok in Delhi. Had best-selling author and life coach Gaur Gopal Das watched it, he would have said that Neha had found purpose in life. After all, it was one of the major themes he dealt with at the summit. “Mark Twain once said that there are two most important days in everyone’s life,” he said. “The day you are born and the day you find out why.”

In fact, purpose has a special meaning in health care. As Riyad Mathew, chief associate editor and director of THE WEEK, said in his presidential address, if a journalist gets an exit poll wrong using technology, it might not matter much, but if a doctor gets something wrong, it could be a matter of life and death. No one has seen this sacredness of life at closer quarters than those working in the health care industry. Each of the eminent delegates at the summit spoke on different aspects of health care, but what united them was a passion for purpose-driven medicine.