What AI Gets Wrong About Your Health with Michael Turken, MD (Ep 213.5)

Patients are already asking AI the questions they cannot always ask their doctors.

That creates enormous opportunity, but also real risk. AI can help people organize complex medical information, prepare for appointments, and better understand their health. It can also sound completely certain when the evidence is weak or the answer is wrong.

In this live episode of Bendy Bodies, host Dr. Linda Bluestein speaks with Michael Turken, MD, an internist at UCSF and founder of My Doctor Friend, an AI health companion designed to support patients navigating medical complexity.

Dr. Turken explores the growing gap between what patients need from healthcare and what traditional systems can realistically provide, especially between appointments. He explains where AI may help fill that gap, where it can go wrong, and why these tools should support rather than replace the patient-physician relationship.

The conversation includes practical strategies for connecting medical records to AI platforms, checking what an AI model actually understands about your health history, keeping that information accurate and current, and recognizing situations where AI may be less reliable, particularly when the science itself is still evolving.

Takeaways:

AI chatbots are not healthcare providers, and many are not subject to HIPAA protections in the same way healthcare organizations and covered entities are.

AI can sound highly confident even when its answer is incomplete, overly reassuring, or wrong. The conversation includes discussion of AI sycophancy, in which a model may reinforce a user’s assumptions or provide reassuring responses rather than appropriately challenging them.

If you connect your medical records to an AI platform, periodically ask it to summarize what it believes about your diagnoses, medications, major medical events, and current health history. This can help uncover outdated, missing, or incorrect information.

AI may be particularly useful in addressing the gap between what patients want from healthcare, such as the ability to ask questions at any hour, organize complex information, and prepare for appointments, and what traditional healthcare systems can currently provide.

For medically complex patients, the quality of an AI answer depends heavily on the quality, completeness, and accuracy of the information the model is using.

To get 2 months of Premium access to My Doctor Friend, use code "BENDY"