It Answers at 11pm
When a brain tumor diagnosis sent Melinda through six months of hospitals, biopsies, and medications she’d never heard of, HealthScout offered her something doctors couldn’t: answers at 11pm.
Full Disclosure: I built HealthScout, an app to help patients navigate our complex healthcare system. Melinda is a real user. Her name has been changed to protect her privacy.
A Child Found Her on the Floor
Melinda is a pre-school teacher. One day last fall one of the children came back from recess and found her on the floor, unconscious. The frightened student ran to find another teacher, who called 911. The paramedics recognized she had a seizure and immediately took her to the hospital, where scans found a mass in her brain.
Melinda doesn’t remember any of it. Her memory picks up in the ambulance, where she told someone her chest hurt. It hurt because her colleagues had been doing chest compressions.
At the hospital, after more tests, they took her in for a biopsy. She came out of it with her head pounding and her daughter Erin sitting nearby. Melinda’s first request was for her mouth guard. She thought her jaw was causing the headache. It took a few minutes before anyone explained to her that she’d just had brain surgery.
The first biopsy came back inconclusive. She didn’t have many options except to do a second biopsy, but that couldn’t be scheduled for months. Now she had to wallow in that uncertainty. New symptoms appeared that she may have ignored before, but now they made her nervous. She wanted to know if any new symptom was connected to the mass in her brain.
Help with Uncertainty
About a month later, a friend came to Melinda’s house to visit and bring dinner. While they were there, the friend picked up Melinda’s phone and installed HealthScout for her.
Melinda immediately started asking it questions. She noticed cigarette and metallic smells when nobody around her could. Could that be related to her brain tumor? HealthScout confirmed that phantom smells are a recognized sign of a mild seizure, something none of her doctors had mentioned to her yet.
Then when Melinda missed a dose of her seizure medication one night, she needed to know whether to take it late, skip it, or double up in the morning. It was not the kind of question you sit with until your doctor’s office opens. So she opened HealthScout, got an answer specific to her medication and her dosing schedule, and went to sleep.
Her doctors weren’t available for a quick consult at 11pm. HealthScout was.
Before every appointment, she would open HealthScout and ask what questions she should bring to her oncologist, her neurologist, or whoever she was seeing that week. HealthScout helped her bring the version of herself who was prepared, specific, and hard to dismiss.
“When I’m seeing doctors,” she told me, “I’m using it multiple times a day.”
Her Doctor Said She Didn't Need AI. She Disagreed.
Melinda had the second biopsy, and they were able to remove 75% of the tumor at the same time. That was when they finally had enough information to make a diagnosis.
She had a Grade 2 glioma — a slow-growing, manageable form of brain cancer. Her oncologist told her it was “the best news I can give anybody.”
It was great news, but a new drug and a new reality meant new symptoms and more questions.
She was out to a Japanese place with friends one night and wanted a little sake. She already suspected what the answer would be, but she asked HealthScout anyway. It told her the alcohol would interfere with her seizure medication. Her friends were telling her the same thing, but she wanted to know from something that actually had her records.
During one of her appointments, she pulled out her phone to ask HealthScout a question right in front of her doctor. He told her she didn't need ChatGPT because he could answer her questions himself.
She told him she wasn’t using ChatGPT. She was using HealthScout, and it had all her medical records. So when HealthScout answered a question, it already knew what medications she was on, what surgeries she’d had, and what her diagnosis actually was.
He said, “Oh, that’s good.”
If you ask ChatGPT about a missed seizure medication dose, it answers for seizure patients generally. HealthScout answered for Melinda specifically, because it already had her records.
HealthScout Remembers So You Don't Have To
At one point during our conversation, I asked Melinda about the medical term for her diagnosis. She paused. She knew it started with a G. She was pretty sure there was an “oma” in there somewhere. So she opened HealthScout and asked.
“Grade 2 glioma.”
“I’ve gone back to do that for other things too,” she said. “If I can’t remember something, I’ll just ask, what did doctor so-and-so say about this.”
Because her records are all in one place, she doesn't have to hold the whole story in her head.
She still uses HealthScout every day. She used it the morning of the interview we did for this piece, to prepare questions for an upcoming appointment with her oncologist.
“I honestly cannot imagine going through this journey without it.”
HealthScout is an educational tool only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with qualified healthcare professionals for medical decisions.
HealthScout is available free on the App Store and requires no signup or email collection. Upload one record and ask your first question in under a minute.