Cancer turned me into a power user of AI for my own care.
This is the exact system I use before, during and after every doctor visit. Free tools, no code, ez pz.
Steal whatever is useful for your next appointment or send it to someone who needs it. https://x.com/i/article/2115127516381827072
The AI Playbook I Built Surviving Cancer. Use It at Your Next Appointment.
Most people use AI for their health like a Magic 8 Ball. Vague question, vague answer, feel better or worse, close the app.
I was diagnosed with lung cancer in July 2024. Never smoked. Since then, AI has caught a drug side effect I never knew about, found me a clinical trial an hour from my house, and kept 150+ appointments from turning into chaos.
I'm sharing the whole setup because I think every patient should run some version of it.
You don't need to be technical. You need to be proactive.
Here are the 7 pieces. Steal whatever helps.
1. Give it rules, not open questions
An open-ended health question is just Dr. Google with better grammar. One lab is off, AI lists five causes, and you're up at 2 AM over a nothingburger.
So I give it rules:
Open-ended questions get you noise. Rules get you signal.
The full copy-paste prompt: https://x.com/kevinace/status/2115941755455787305
2. Put a bot on trial watch
I'd been watching a new drug for my cancer, but not if it meant flying across the country over and over.
A Grok Bot I built watches for new trials and treatments for my exact diagnosis. It found that trial an hour from my house. I never would have known on my own, and I'm pretty on top of this stuff.
New trials open constantly. Nobody is going to call you about them.
Get the bot for free: https://x.ai/bot/liwVNZ8sQXxJEK-bx1YvW
3. Give your AI a notebook
AI only knows what's public. The stuff that matters most for your care isn't: what your doctor said last visit, when a symptom started, what the trial nurse told you on the phone.
So I keep it all in Notion. 20+ pages. My AI writes to it and reads from it before it answers anything.
If you're starting from zero, start with 3 pages:
- Symptoms log: what, when it started, when it stopped, pain 1-10
- Visit notes: what each doctor said, plus questions for next time
- Options: every treatment or trial anyone has mentioned, and who said it
Each doctor sees their own slice. Your AI sees all of it.
More here: https://x.com/kevinace/status/2115503868448747933
4. Record every appointment
I record every care conversation. In person, phone, video, trial teams. I ask first. Most doctors record these days too.
Then AI turns it into something useful:
- The notetaker emails me a summary
- My AI pulls out the handful of things that actually matter
- It logs them in my notebook
- Next visit, it flags when two doctors told me different things
Hot take: a doctor who doesn't want to be recorded isn't confident in what they're saying.
A 30-minute appointment is a firehose. Nobody remembers it all.
Full breakdown: https://x.com/kevinace/status/2115594464412737928
5. Connect your real records
ChatGPT's Health feature can connect to your medical records and Apple Health. Ask a question and it pulls your actual meds, appointments and scan results mid-conversation.
That's the difference between advice for "a patient" and advice for you.
An AI that can't see your chart is guessing.
Only catch: it's US only for now. Setup walkthrough here: https://x.com/kevinace/status/2115216984485032087
6. Ask about your data, not your symptoms
This summer my resting heart rate jumped to about 78. I assumed something new was wrong.
One structured prompt went through 3 years of my Apple Watch data and found something I never knew in thousands of hours of using AI: my old cancer pill had been holding my heart rate down. About 66 before it. About 61 on it. So part of the "spike" was me coming off the drug.
Not all of it. My doctors are working on the rest. But I walked in with the right question instead of a panic.
Your phone already has years of health data. Most people never ask it anything.
The exact prompt is copy-paste ready here: https://x.com/kevinace/status/2115171682746839224
7. Keep up on everything else
Cancer isn't my only health problem. My cancer pill quietly pushed my blood pressure to 150/100.
So I built a second bot. Every day it sends a short, sourced brief on what's new for any condition, with the hype filtered out. Mine tracks high blood pressure. Yours could track diabetes, migraines, or your mom's Parkinson's.
Most days it tells me nothing important happened. That's the best part.
What AI doesn't do
It doesn't replace my doctors. Every answer gets checked. The good ones go to my oncologist as questions, not as orders.
AI doesn't make my decisions. It makes sure I'm making them with everything on the table.
Why I'm sharing all of this
Most patients get handed a folder and told to wait.
I got handed a stage 4 diagnosis and decided I was done waiting. Every tool in this Article is something I built or leaned on to stay one step ahead of my own cancer. Most are free. None need code.
Start with the notebook this week. Once your AI knows your story, every appointment after that gets sharper.
And if someone you love is sitting in a waiting room right now with that same folder, send them this. It might be the thing that gets them their next good day.