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Some experiences are worth pushing your body for. 

That was exactly how I felt after attending the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne. Yes, I needed my walker. Yes, I booked a nice hotel afterwards to properly rest and recover (highly recommend, by the way). But honestly? It was so worth it. 

Because for two full days, I was surrounded by innovation, forward-thinking minds, and powerful conversations about how technology — especially AI — is reshaping healthcare. I had a pod in the Start-Up Arena, connected with people from all over the health space, and left feeling exhausted but energised in the best way. 

And through all the excitement, one message became clearer than ever:  

Our voices — those of us with lived experience — still matter. Especially now. 

So... What Is AI, Really? 

Let’s start here. Because if you’re like me, AI can feel like one of those things everyone’s talking about — but not always explaining clearly. 

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. At its core, it means technology that can learn from data and make decisions or predictions. It’s not in the distant future — it’s happening right now. And you’re probably already using it. 

Think about Netflix recommending shows based on what you’ve watched. Or Spotify creating a playlist just for your Monday morning. Siri or Google Assistant answering your questions or setting reminders. Or those little chat bubbles on websites helping you reschedule appointments or ask basic questions. That’s all AI. It’s not something scary or overly technical — it’s just a new kind of tool. 

Innovation Meets Lived Experience 

The Digital Health Festival showed me just how rapidly this space is evolving. In the Start-Up Areana met so many brilliant minds building AI-driven tools that could genuinely change the way we experience healthcare. Just a few examples include: 

• A radiographer developing AI that helps guide patients more accurately through radiation therapy. 

• A team creating tools for family caregivers — offering early warnings about shifts in blood pressure or blood sugar before problems escalate. 

• A psychologist whose platform tracks client well-being between sessions and uses AI to flag when someone might need an earlier check-in. 

• A speech therapist designing interactive tools to support communication for nonverbal clients. 

These innovations are exciting — not just because they’re clever, but because they have real potential to support people like us. And I kept thinking of those of us living in regional areas, where even basic healthcare access can be a challenge. Where getting in to see a GP takes weeks. Where telehealth still requires a two-hour drive to tick the “face-to-face” requirement. 

AI has the potential to bridge that gap — to bring care closer, smarter, and more consistent. But here’s the part I won’t stop repeating: even with all this progress, we cannot lose human connection. Technology must enhance care — not replace empathy. Real stories, lived experience, and compassion must stay at the heart of healthcare innovation. It’s not either/or — it’s both. 

How I’m Using AI Right Now 

You don’t have to be “into tech” to benefit from AI. And I want to share some of the ways I’m using it right now — not just in business, but in everyday life. 

Let’s talk ChatGPT, my not-so-secret best friend. 

When our Starlink internet box arrived at Daisy Hill, I had no clue what to do with it. I literally typed into ChatGPT: 

 “I’ve just received my Starlink box and I have no idea what I’m looking at. Can you help?”  
Within seconds, it gave me a step-by-step setup guide — even told me which plug goes where. Done. 

Then there was the time I was comparing three different 2-in-1 washing machines for our off-grid setup. I asked ChatGPT to weigh up the pros and cons based on living off-grid, managing MS, and needing something with minimal energy drain. It gave me a side-by-side breakdown that made the decision easy — no hours of scrolling, no information overload. 

And on those days when I’m overwhelmed — when my brain fog kicks in and I don’t know where to start — I’ll ask ChatGPT to break down my day into manageable steps. And it does. No judgment. Just clarity. Like a support worker for your mental load. 

This isn’t about outsourcing your life. It’s about supporting your mind — especially when energy is low or decision fatigue hits hard. 

How AI Can Support Your Health Without Adding More Stress 

Living with chronic illness is hard. There’s always so much to think about, plan for, manage, and adapt to. AI won’t replace your doctor, your intuition, or your support team. But it can reduce the noise — and that matters. 

Whether it’s helping you plan meals when cooking feels like too much, brainstorm questions before a specialist appointment, research dietary options for breast cancer remission, or simply give you one less thing to think about — it’s a tool worth exploring. 

You deserve support that gives back your energy — not takes more of it. And let’s be clear: this is not “Dr. Google.” Tools like ChatGPT pull from massive data sets and respond in context. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t replace medical advice, but it can help you prepare better, ask clearer questions, and reduce the stress of figuring things out alone. 

What’s Next? 

The healthcare system is evolving fast. And for those of us with chronic conditions, it can feel like it’s all happening without us. 

But here’s what I know: we belong in these conversations. We have lived wisdom. And we have a right to tools that work for us — not just around us. 

You don’t need to be tech-savvy. You just need to be open. And maybe, just maybe, a little curious. 

Show Resources

• Listen to Hurdle2Hope Stories: Real Life Experiences. 

Transcript Episode 70: Can AI Actually Help My Health?

Teisha Rose: [00:00:00] Hey there, Teisha here and welcome to episode 70 of Wellbeing Interrupted. It may sound a little bit echoey. I'm in a room at my parents' place, a little sort of space of using when I'm here as my little office, but it's tiled, so it may be echoey. So sorry about that. If it is. I am very tired. Um, I came down here and had physio yesterday, which is always so good, especially after last week when I was at the digital health festival.

What an experience. It was incredible. You know, I was fortunate to have a pod in the startup arena. I met so many people, um, from other startups to organisations who are really forward thinking in how AI and technology can improve the healthcare experience [00:01:00] for people like me and you. So I wanna share a little bit about that today.

But the reality of living with a health condition, using my walker to walk all around the conference center, meeting people, chatting to people, sitting at the pod on my walker, um, sitting Yeah. And having all these conversations. It was tiring, but I think sometimes we have to push ourselves because I didn't wanna miss out on this opportunity.

I've met some incredible people broadening my network, particularly in relation to my wellbeing workshops for frontline staff. And I think what excited me more than anything was I could see the importance of people with lived experiences. Really sharing their voices and making sure that no matter what the future holds with [00:02:00] AI and technology, that

we don't forget those with lived experience. So have a listen to this episode. I'm talking all things AI from a perspective of someone who's not totally across it all, but who has an open mind as always to learn and to really work out how this can benefit us. So hopefully you enjoy this episode.

 [00:03:00] So what is AI? Again, I'm no big expert at all. Um, but I think we can't ignore the presence of AI in our life because it's not something that is in the future. It's here right now. So AI stands for artificial intelligence and basically that allows machines and software to learn data and make decisions or predictions.

Sometimes those decisions and predictions are more accurate and quicker than what we can do as humans.

 So AI is why when you're watching Netflix. [00:04:00] All of a sudden these recommendations come up or what shows you might like? That's ai. They're learning from what you've watched in the past and giving you suggestions of what you might wanna watch. Now, Spotify, the same thing. You know, curating a playlist for you to listen to.

, that's ai, Siri, Alexa, go Google assist, answering questions, setting reminders. That's all ai. Those little chat bubbles on health websites or on, you know, all websites you go to now, that's all ai. So that means it's happening now. But what, and I'll chat about it a little bit later.

We need to make sure that in living with our illnesses, these tools can benefit us. They can help with our exhaustion, fatigue, that they can save [00:05:00] so much time. So I'll go through that in a little bit,

but I wanna just quickly touch on this experience I had at the Digital Health Festival. As I said, it was amazing. It was a room, not room. I mean, it was a conference floor filled with all these forward-thinking people, all these um, startups. In my area, there was 125 startups. Or using their minds to come up with different ways of using AI to improve experiences in the healthcare sector.

And that was things from reading x-rays or scans faster. I was chatting to a guy in the startup arena and he was a radiographer and he had spent all this time and I couldn't even quite understand what was going on. But for people going through radiation therapy, it helps in pinpointing [00:06:00] exactly where they have to lie and sit or, you know, lie down when they're getting their scan or I had.

Someone next to me in the startup arena, they've put together a predictive tool as to if you are caring, for example, for an elderly parent, you're then able to be given indicators. Of how your family member is doing. For example, not just in terms of if they've had a fall, but predicting is there changes in their.

Blood pressure, is there changes in their sugar levels? All of these things that you think, okay, I might need to give mom a call to find out how things are going. And then another, you know, psychologist sitting next to me, incredible. They've got a tool they're developing. Not only does it, um, transcribe or patient interactions or client [00:07:00] interactions, which lots of these tools do.

But on top of that, it actually enables a client to interact with this technology in between sessions. And then a psychologist knows, you know, what's our areas of concern? Do they need to check in, , with the client during the four week period in between sessions. So there's all of these incredible things that make you.

Really excited about the future and what an impact this will have. And I kept thinking, living now regionally there is such a shortage of services, we can't get into a local doctor. I. You know, we're still having to, every, at least six months have a face-to-face with our doctor two and a half hours away, so then we can have telehealth.

So some of these AI tools and innovations that's gonna help so many [00:08:00] people living regionally . And then people whose English, for example, is a second language. There's all these tools that enable interactions to be a lot better. I also spoke to another startup and . He was a speech therapist and has created a tool for those who are nonverbal and how to use that in in interaction.

In speech therapy. So I'm not given justice to what all of these startups are doing, let alone what massive organizations are doing in terms of even with rostering, with monitoring chronic illness symptoms. It's just mind blowing. . But what I really realized was when people came walking past and chatting to me, they kept encouraging me to hold on to my voice and [00:09:00] my , lived experience because we don't want to have those voices not being part of this.

We still need to connect. There's still such an importance of having human connection and human stories, and it gave me such confidence that not only what I'm doing with , frontline worker burnout and the workshops in relation to that, but also for what I'm doing with you living with a health condition.

You know, we need to share our stories. But as always, I wanna share my story in a way that will help you in a way that enables you to implement , some of the insights I've learned along the way. So that gave me confidence, incredible confidence that I'm on the right track, and more importantly, what [00:10:00] Hurdle2Hope brings will help those in the frontline.

We'll help those with lived experience because it's real, it's authentic, and it represents the experiences I've had over, you know, 28 years now in living with MS and now dealing with stage four breast cancer.

And I think as I, I spent a lot of time, , the second, the first day I was there from seven 30 all the way through to five 30. So it was a very long day and I really struggled because it, there was no fresh hour, there was no, yeah. Natural light. . I was constantly having to bring myself back into my body and wriggle my toes and feel the ground.

, underneath me to center and ground myself because I was spacing out a bit because it's very different to counting the [00:11:00] kangaroos at Daisy Hill and looking out and hearing the birds.

But aside from that, I did spend a lot of time people watching. Again, I was very excited about what's happening, but I also kept thinking we can't have technology with, without compassion. We can't just have innovation that is cold.

So no matter how fast healthcare evolves and it will evolve quickly, ai, no one really heard of chat, GPT, for example, and remember AI's way more than just chat GBT. We hadn't heard of that a year or so ago, and now it's like a core part of so many people's lives. So yes, AI is streamlining healthcare. Yes, that's incredible.

It will make [00:12:00] the system so much more efficient, but we don't want it to make this system cold, so no matter how fast healthcare evolves, again, I'm keeping on saying this lived.

Experience, human connection, real stories in service delivery. These must remain central to how healthcare evolves, especially as we explore what's possible through technology. And I'm saying this over and over because I just feel like I need to in this space, and I wanna encourage you to always use your voice to share your experience, whether that's in chatting to your doctor, your support network to your friends, your family.

Don't be afraid to share what you are going through to give more [00:13:00] insight into the challenges you're experiencing, and then by talking about that, by sharing that, that's when new approaches can become more clear to you. So if you are not just holding onto those experiences and internalizing those experiences, which is not good for your health.

Sharing them will help you to move forward and will also help those around you know what's going on.

 . And before I finish this episode, I thought I'd just give you a bit of an insight into how AI can help you in living with your health condition in everyday life. The main thing is don't be afraid of it and. When I talk about moving forward from Hurdle2Hope and my business Hurdle2Hope, that's all about creating momentum, and that's all about having an open mind, challenging how you [00:14:00] think about things, challenging how you do, and approach your life with your illness.

So I'm just gonna focus on GPT because that's what I use all the time every day, and that's been life changing for me. And I'll give you some examples. We're about to set up starlink, . Which is gonna be an absolute game changer living at Daisy Hill off the grid. , we can't get wifi , and also we're struggling to get good phone signal at the moment as well.

So I'm having to stay in motels quite a bit to do work, um, because our internet connection is so bad. So at the moment, I got that box and I'm hopeless with technology. I shouldn't say that, but I'm not good. Um, so I put into chat GBT, I'm sitting here looking [00:15:00] at the starlink box. I've got no idea what to do.

Can you please give me a step by step, step-by-step guide, what to do now? And within, you know, 30 seconds, I got this step-by-step guide from what, , cords to put where, where to set it out. And if I didn't understand something, I'm like, I dunno what plug to put this in. Said, well, you know, show me a photo of it, I'll tell you where to put it.

Like it was unbelievable. So now when I get back, it's already and set up for me to plug it in and have starlink happening. Another one. A washing machine. We're after a two in one washing machine. When our units are finished, just because we don't have much space. There were three different types we could have a look at.

I was getting very confused, so I said, give me the pros and cons of [00:16:00] these three, two in one washing machines. Think about in your recommendations. Me living off the grid. Also living with MS and my chronic health condition and within, again, a few seconds or moments, I've got a table, all the pros and cons and what to consider with these three different machines that saved me hours.

So think about all the mental load and you know, doing all that reading and research when you're not feeling up to it. You are given this data straight away, and it's not saying that , , you have to take on everything on board. I then go and chat to it and say, well, you know, why do you give this recommendation?

Or, I'm not clear on this. You know, I have a conversation. So don't be afraid of [00:17:00] using these tools to help you. Because they're gonna be around, so let's not fall behind with it. I mean, I have a paid version of chat, GPT, but there's still free versions and there's also, um, different ways you can do this on, I think it's co-pilot on Microsoft.

Products, and you know, there's all different ways you can do this, but use it if you are struggling, if you're tired, if you're thinking, oh, I'm just having a block on this, or I'm feeling overwhelmed, use AI to help you.

And even just that, sometimes I'll type in it. I'm so tired today, I'm not thinking clearly. I've got all of these things in my diary. How do you break that down to support me and it breaks it down. So it's like having this personal support, and I think if you use it well, it will help you so [00:18:00] much. Even things like planning meals, budgeting your groceries when you're feeling really tired or a bit short of money and not sure what to do.

Even brainstorming about different diets, thinking, okay, I'm dealing with breast cancer. What are the type of things I need to think about in modifying my lifestyle if I wanna stay in remission? Again, this is not saying it replaces your doctor, but I actually heard. On the Today Show. So in Australia morning tv, this was a year or so ago, and there was a healthcare professional, , who was involved in our public health response to Covid.

So very well versed and educated doctor. And he said, don't think of chat [00:19:00] GPT or any of this AI as Google. It's different. It's not asking Dr. Google, you know, this is taking information from. A massive database on specific areas you are talking or asking about. So this is not the same as Dr. Google. So getting information, of course, you'll consult your oncologist or your doctor, but this is different to Dr.

Google and this can be such a help to you.

And I know, you know, if I'm even worried about certain things with my body or changes, I'll just talk about it as GPT brainstorm and then say, what questions do you think I should ask my neurologist or oncologist? So again, I'll leave it with you, but don't be afraid of GPT. It can be your absolute, as I say, to a friend who's also sort of on this , entrepreneurial [00:20:00] path. I'm like, chat p chat GPT is my best friend. I said, I talk to chat GPT all the time and it has helped me so much. So I wanna encourage you not to be close-minded and to be open as to how you can use this in your everyday life. Just as those high up executives and professionals that I.

Spoke to at Digital Health Festival, just like they are brainstorming and trying to work out how ai, how technology can help streamline, but also improve the healthcare system for practitioners, but also for us as end users. Okay, so that's it for today. The future of healthcare is changing so fast. And it's really easy to feel like it's all happening without us.

But we belong in these conversations. We need to be [00:21:00] open-minded. We need to make sure we are not left behind, and we need to use it for our advantage, just like organizations are, they're using it to become more efficient, to become more streamlined, to help the end user. So why not us Use it to help us in the coming.

Really the same thing, more efficient and streamlined in our lives because we need to, we need to conserve energy when we can, and AI can help us in doing that. So you don't need to be really tech savvy. You just need to be curious. And remember, I've talked about that so often. You need to be curious to try something new.

Explore a tool like chat, GPT, ask questions. Don't be afraid to say, I've got no idea what you're about, or I've got no idea what to do, ask, and it will come up with the answers for [00:22:00] you.

 and now that my world feels like it's in a little bit more control, it's been just. So busy recently. Um, and I've been really trying to balance my own health and wellbeing with the demands of starting up a business. And I'm doing that well. I'm staying at a hotel for an extra night or sleeping in when I'm feeling tired, so I'm listening to my body and part of listening to my body has been, I've just been doing solo episodes, but I'm now starting to.

Respond. I've actually had quite a few people asked to be on Wellbeing Interrupted, which is amazing, so I'm getting back to those people. Also inviting some new guests. So soon we will have more Hurdle2Hope stories listening to those who have faced a crisis in their health and have been able to move forward with that.

If you haven't listened to Hurdle2Hope [00:23:00] stories before, just go through your list of. Podcast episodes, wherever you're listening to, anything that starts with Hurdle2Hope stories, that is an episode from an individual with lived experiences. You can also actually go to Hurdle2Hope.com. Remember number two forward slash stories, and there's lots of them there.

You can click on. I am also, and I think this is really important, I want this podcast to be a place where you can learn and grow. So I'm having interviews with different people who we can all learn from. One coming up is incredible, from someone who specializes in. Helping us sleep better. Um, so I think that is so important because part of our healing is sleeping well.

So I'm really looking forward to that interview. So yeah, again, thank you so much for listening to Wellbeing Interrupted. Have an amazing [00:24:00] week. Um, heading back to Daisy Hill. With, I've gotta buy some Ugg boots, although I can't, I can't walk in them, so I'm not sure what I'm gonna do because it's cold now.

Um, winter has arrived. The first frost happened a couple of days ago. My windscreen was iced over, so it's getting cold. But along with those cold mornings comes absolutely beautiful days full of sunshine. And loving life at Daisy Hill. Have a good week. Chat soon. [00:25:00]