DHABA
Inspired by the punjabi roadside resting place, DHABA is a podcast that invites pause, perspective, and peppered wisdom. Each episode brings together cooks, caretakers, bridge-builders and makers whose craft speaks louder than credentials. DHABA is a resting place for restless minds, where experience is the spice and conversation the fuel.
DHABA
Dr. Gyles Morrison MBBS MSc Clinical UX Strategist From Ward To Wireframes
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We welcome Dr Giles Morrison, a former NHS doctor turned clinical UX strategist, to unpack why healthcare needs a distinct approach to design and how better products can make care safer, kinder and fairer. We explore burnout, equity, AI’s limits and the craft of behaviour change that sticks.
• Coining clinical UX as a distinct discipline focused on clinicians and patients
• Why generalist UX transfers but requires deep healthcare learning
• Frontline medicine pressures, burnout and human factors
• Push and pull from practice to design and strategy
• The role of HCI training, mentorship and shared language
• Health inequality, policy and the moral duty of inclusive design
• AI strengths in synthesis and risks of bias and overconfidence
• Cultural nuance, informed consent and the danger of half‑knowledge
• Behaviour change beyond notifications, designing humane nudges
• Joy, self‑care and sustaining impact beyond the ward
• Where to find Giles and how to connect
Find me on LinkedIn: search for Dr Giles Morrison. You know it’s me because there’s a stethoscope emoji at the start of my name. I’m happy to offer my support and help with you on your journey in this career. Whether you’re new to UX as a clinician trying to get into digital health, please do reach out.
DHABA
Brewed slowly. served warmly. crafted with care
Meet Dr Giles And Clinical UX
SPEAKER_01We finally end with finding something which I'm sure is going to add a huge lot of value to many types of listeners. So without any further ado, Dr. Giles. Hello. Hello. Would you like to just give us a quick introduction, please? Who are you and what is it that you do? Right, so I'm Giles.
SPEAKER_03I work as a clinical experience, user experience strategist. I've been in this field now since 2014. It's over a decade now, over 11 years, in fact. My work has got me traveling a bit, but ultimately it's been looking at the area of what I've coined as clinical UX. Back in 2015, I coined it to describe the work I do, which is looking at the experiences that clinicians and patients have with healthcare technology and services. And it's the general UX work, research, design, strategy. But it's with that focus on clinicians and patients. I have to understand about clinical risk and the way that we treat patients, understand what is putting patients off, what is it about healthcare behavioral science that's going to impact someone adopting this new technology or this new way of engaging with healthcare services. There's a regulatory side of things that makes things fun. And of course, inclusive design gets a lot more complicated when it comes to healthcare because it's a basic human right to be healthy. So it's not just a nice to have to try and be inclusive. And I think it even goes beyond just thinking it from a legal perspective. There's a moral obligation that are we really doing what we can to keep people healthy? Um, which I think is a question we uh don't ask often enough in my line of work. But yeah, 11 years, clinical UX, mainly research and design, moved more into strategy about halfway into my career, and uh I love it. And as um was introduced, Dr. Giles Morrison, I used to work as a medical doctor, did that for a little while before jumping ship into digital health.
Defining A Distinct Discipline
SPEAKER_01That's very, very, very helpful and amazing at the same time. So obviously, you and I have spoken with one another for quite some time. And I just want to be absolutely clear. The term clinical UX, that's something that you derived. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_03If I'm really honest, my first job was as a clinical analyst. So it's very much like a business analyst, but for someone who comes from a more clinical background, that was the job title. Throwing in the deep end, but the work I was actually doing was UX work for this electronic health record system. But when I then started hearing about this whole profession of user experience, UX research, UX design, if I'm gonna do this in healthcare and from a clinical background, does that mean I'm a clinical UX professional? And then I mulled this over a bit longer and was like, well, actually, there's something unique in what I'm doing here. Like time and again, as long as the end user is a clinician or a patient, there's some sort of regulatory consideration that's unique to healthcare. There's some sort of clinical risk component that's unique again to healthcare. Even the behavioral science part is healthcare behavioral science, but it's unique to healthcare. And then finally, that inclusive design piece really, again, it's just a bit more complicated because it's for healthcare. So the more and more I was in the field, I realized, yeah, this needs to be seen as something distinct. It doesn't mean that being a general UX professional doesn't lend itself to healthcare. Of course, it does. But you're throwing in the deep end, and there's going to be a lot of knowledge that's going to be required to get the job done well. I add that caveat. Of course, you can do some good work, but to really make a difference, there will be an additional learning exercise you have to go through to really deliver on these sort of projects. Hence why, unfortunately, a lot of digital health solutions are a bit rubbish.
SPEAKER_01Just a bit, I have to say. I mean, I I've got to acknowledge and keep me on this too, please, that design in healthcare has been steadily growing. And its visibility is becoming a lot more salient. It's a lot more prominent. Yes. Um and excuse me. But the thing I just again, I just want to be absolutely clear here. You are not in the world of design, and you haven't got your status of being a doctor because you've studied well and reached and attained academically via psychology, for example. You were actually frontline NHS doctor.
From NHS Ward To UX Strategy
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I helped deliver babies. I um was there when people have taken their last breath. I've I've seen quite a bit. It was three years I worked as a doctor. My studies was over a five-year period. But yeah, I've seen um I've seen it all. And I think that knowledge of working as a doctor is not essential to be in my line of work, but definitely it provides you with facts and context that is invaluable.
SPEAKER_01I can I can definitely, definitely relate to that. So, how how where do we start? This is, I don't know. I mean, how many folks do you know yourself that are also qualified frontline doctors who've done that experience, who've done that graft in the trenches, pun totally intended, got that scar tissue, but then have pivoted over into the world of design. Because I've not I I'm I'm thinking you're you're quite unique, or am I wrong? There are quite a few.
SPEAKER_03Um, I can't give all the credit for their existence, but a lot of those that are in this field I've I've had to train. Um, they've stumbled across the field maybe before they've crossed paths with me, but I've helped them along in that journey. I can think of off the top of my head of at least four doctors. Um, quite a few other clinicians, though. There's a lot of occupational therapists that go into UX, particularly UX research, and even more so in the United States. I can't understand the phenomenon, but it's an observation I've made. Um, you get a few physios, you get a few nurses. Doctors definitely are amongst the rarest to go into this field. You will find a lot of doctors who go into digital health as advisors, and they will oftentimes might even have a job title such as clinical product lead, which to be really honest, means that they are advising as a clinician on the design of a product that's going to be used by a clinician or patient. But that doesn't mean that they've done a significant training in UX. There is an element of common sense that can be applied. Be honest, we can be honest about that. But the actual training and doing the grunt work of that research and design, I can only think of enough to count on one hand. It's not it's not common as doctors, it's not common.
SPEAKER_01That's, I mean, even that is quite quite a jump. But as is the tradition on on this podcast, um, what were you doing as a rug rat? How'd you how'd you get from who you were and what you were doing back in those formative years? And okay, I want to I want to be a doctor. I I want to be a frontline NHS person who's there to care for people.
SPEAKER_03I first decided to be a doctor when I was 14 years old. The idea never entered my mind for the previous years of my life at all. So when I was really young, earliest memory is probably about four years old. This is when I used to have a high top like Will Smith from Fresh Prince at Bel-Air. So I'm drawing the stick figures, and when it's a self-portrait, there will be a block on my head. So I remember doing those drawings, and as um within a couple of years, I was routinely copying the illustrations from the books to decorate what was the book box in year two. So, like six years old, seven years old. And I was quite good at doing that. I've never really been so good at drawing from imagination. I'm very good at drawing from what I can see. And then I got a bit into writing, and so I was convinced by the time I finished primary school that I would be, you know, an illustrator, artist, maybe do a bit of writing. By the time I got into secondary school, I quickly realized that all these artists that we're learning about in art class are mostly dead, and it seems like the only way to get great fortune is past the period of being alive, which doesn't sound like a very good career choice. So I had to think, what could I be doing differently? And so I spoke to the IT teachers and said, you know, I've interested to get into IT. I like using computers. At that age, when you're like 12, 13, using computers, unless you have the funds and I didn't have the funds. Using computers wasn't about building computers and changing out bits, it was literally the software side of things. And even then, unless you're getting serious encouragement, which I wasn't, I was getting encouragement in other aspects of education. I didn't know about coding. So for me, using computers meant um computer-aided design. It meant um feeling confident with um using the internet or using Microsoft Office. And I and I liked doing it. I was good at troubleshooting and learning advanced skills with that software, those softwares, rather. So I suppose that IT teached about a career in IT, and they gave the most discouragement as possible. They made it very clear that by the time I would be of age to get into university, which we're talking about just past the millennium, um, that there wouldn't be any jobs. At the time, like I said, I'm in my early teens. I don't know any better. I'm blindly listening to the teachers, but it was terrible, terrible advice.
SPEAKER_01I mean, hold, hold, hold. Sorry, sorry to interrupt you there. When they were saying to you at that point, there would be no jobs. What jobs were they thinking of?
SPEAKER_03I don't even know because it was such a brief conversation. They just emphasized that perhaps because they were IT teachers and were actually working in industry, that there was no real opportunity. And again, I didn't know anybody doing IT. So I just had I took their word for it when they said that there wouldn't be any jobs. I didn't the whole idea of being a software developer or getting into networking or the hardware side of things. I I didn't know what going into IT meant other than I would be using software. But they made it clear that it doesn't matter, there won't be any jobs.
SPEAKER_01So, what direction, if any, did they point you into? None.
Why Doctors Leave And What Pulls Them To Design
SPEAKER_03Like, let's put it this way, right? The secondary school I went to has closed down. Mm-hmm. Hopefully that answers your question why I perhaps wouldn't have got the best of advice and guidance from that school sometimes. So um, I then took some time. Again, I was 14, and I really just sat and thought, like, I knew I wanted to be an artist and illustrator. I still enjoy those sort of skills. I like writing, I like IT, but I'm told there's no jobs. Let's think, right? If I want a job, I want a job that is going to utilize my strengths and my interests, that's gonna pay me well and give me a quality of life that I want. So I was thinking, I like biology, um, because I like science in general, but biology particularly, I like it. Whether it's um the human biology side, whether it's the bit that's talking about like geology and learning about the water cycle and all them sort of things, but I liked science, I liked biology. I knew I liked helping people. I've got early memories, it's very, very random. I was probably in like year six, so the highest grade in primary school, and there was these three girls in reception class, so they're like four going on five, and they were complaining about all wanting to hold each other's hands, but in a particular order, and they're four, so they couldn't figure it out. So I'm there helping them be able to do some sort of like ring around the roses type thing, holding each other's hands. That's like a random memory that I remember having when I was thinking about I want to help people, I want people to have joy. I want people to be happy and get along when they're frustrated to be able to be happy and get along. That came to mind when I'm thinking about, okay, biology, I want to help people, I want to be able to travel. I'd never been in a plane at that point when I was for the first time we were on a plane, I was 18 years old. Like, I want to have a job where I might be able to travel with it as well, because that sounds exciting. I want to be paid well, I want to have loads of money. You know, we had, you know, we didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. We didn't go hungry or anything like that, but you know, mum did the best that she could. She had aspirations. She had aspirations. I had aspirations. And it suddenly came to me, Charles, you should be a doctor. Now I've got no doctors in the family. We've got a couple of nurses, midwife, but no doctors. I didn't even know any doctors apart from the ones that treat me.
SPEAKER_01Complete bolt out of the blue. You don't recall anyone thinking, okay, maybe you might want to consider this. It was all very, okay, there's not going to be any jobs full stop.
SPEAKER_02That's it. That's insane. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03When I look back, I'm like, the advice given was terrible. However, if I if I wasn't told that, I wouldn't have taken that moment to reflect on what I actually wanted to do when I got older. And you and I probably wouldn't be talking right now. To be honest. So it was bad advice, but I would say it was actually necessary advice.
SPEAKER_02Got it. Got it.
SPEAKER_01So fundamentally looking after people, and from that, and those if you like school time observation, yeah, you're just helping people out. You need people to be happy. And crikey went off and become a doctor. Yeah. A proper frontline treating humans doctor. Um why why did you make the pivot to broad brush design? And I I'll I'll let you fill in the gaps and give that a lot more context.
SPEAKER_03So I think the first thing that's always important to highlight is how much of a privilege it was working as a doctor. Like patients make themselves completely vulnerable by choice, or when they're incapacitated, they're just trusting that anybody that's going to look after them is going to do the best that they can and not take advantage of them. So it's a privilege to be a doctor. Didn't take it lightly going into the field once I realized that. And I definitely didn't take it lightly when I decided to leave. But I like to divide it into push and pull factors. So factors that pulled me, pushed me away from medicine, and factors that pulled me towards a career ultimately in UX research and design. So those push factors for sure, like, and it's still the case now for doctors. You obviously road term shift patterns can be frustrating, like long day shifts 12 hours, weekend shifts 12 hours, um, night shifts. But it's when you get them 12 days in a row stretches, it's quite exhausting. When you have to move house every year, and I I was born and raised in East London, and my first job was in Grimsby. Um, yeah, that was a huge culture shock for me. I'm not gonna lie.
SPEAKER_01That'll be a huge culture shock for anybody. East London to Grimsby. Come on. I think it's a culture shock for people in Grimsby, honest.
SPEAKER_03Honestly, so I was sent up there, so those were some big push factors, but then the other issues that used to really bother me, it was really hard to get any time off to go to someone's wedding. It would be um really hard. It's in it's almost impossible to take two weeks off because you're not allowed to take more than nine days off every four months in a row. So um for you to have full 10 days, you need to be utilizing one of your rest days from a night shift or capitalizing on a um bank holiday if you're not on call for that bank holiday.
System Pressures, Burnout And Human Factors
SPEAKER_01Do you do you know if that is still the case today? Oh, it's that hasn't changed. Because I can recall, you know, way back in my distant past when I was helping um design a roster application for you know hospitals. So everyone from um the whoever the manager was in the hospital to different types of healthcare professionals and who gets allocated and all of that. And I can, whilst we're talking about this, I can recall this can't be right. How how how can you expect people to actually find these are medical profession professionals? How can they be at optimum performance, shall we say, with this kind of nonsense in place? And no one but nobody could could give me a response. It was this is how it is. Yeah, your job is to figure out how we can enable, if you like, and um just a scheduling protocol. That's it. No one was interested in looking at, if you like, the human factors of it. Everyone was purely interested in okay, how do we mechanise this? How do we forget about automation, but just how do we make that process available and manageable? Fairly manageable. That's I I I know. That's just weird. But I mean, I w I really want to get into the so you're you're there, you're doing awesome work, obviously. Um what was the point where you thought, you know what? Yeah, there's this thing called UX. I want to do that. I want to leave, but it's it's not a small investment to become a medical doctor.
SPEAKER_03It's not. It's it's many years because most people focus more on the fact that the degree lasts five years. But you need to get into medical school in the first place, and that takes years. It takes years from the perspective of you've decided to go into medical school, so you need to apply, you need to get some work experience, you need to write a personal statement with your, you know, UCAS form to apply for medical school. But generally speaking, the vast majority of medical students, in fact, I don't think I ever met a medical student that didn't fulfill some criteria of being able to play at least one instrument to a high standard, like grade five or above, which is like GCC equivalent, um, are very good at a sport, you know, could be football, basketball, whatever, and probably excels at some other more academic subjects such as writing or creative um sorry, subject such as writing, um art, something along those lines. Which again is not something you're gonna figure out when you're 17 applying. It's something that you would have been doing for years. So to get into medical school is a huge undertaking. To get through medical school is an even greater undertaking. It is not easy. A lot of people actually think. Fail medical school. Once you've completed it, it's kind of easy after that. There's still exams and work to do, and there's still a lot of stress. But once you've made the decision and got into medical school and you can pass it, it's generally a bit easier. So yeah, it's a huge, huge investment for many, many, many years. But I didn't even know about UX when I decided to leave. What made me want to leave was the other push factors. So there would be problems that patients would have that I simply could not do anything about. I recall um uh there's many instances. I won't go into loads, but there was one where I was asked, can you just sign this paperwork for this lady to discharge themselves? I'm like, I've not seen the patient. I'm not gonna say that I'm okay with them discharging. You might want me to, but I've not seen them. It's my signature. So the answer is no. So the patient waited. I saw them. To cut a long story short, the lady had um had uh an episode with alcohol. And she took to the alcohol, which is not normal for her, because after asking social services for assistance with um some problems in the home, there she was given the ultimatum. Either put your eight-year-old daughter in care or your twin 18-year-old boys out of the house, kick them out. And so, as a mother, as a single mother, she didn't know what to do. So she took to drink and then she was brought to the hospital. She needed, she needed help. She needed help because of her mood, you know, the depression that was setting in from all of that. Like anybody with level compassion, whether you're a parent or not, that's a horrific situation to be in. And time and again, I would face situations like that. I'm like, these are problems I simply cannot fix as a doctor. Really, really emotionally draining that. It really does a number on your mind. A lot of doctors that leave the profession, a common thread, because I do a lot of um sort of like career coaching and peer support for doctors that have left. A common thread is that there's too many problems they simply can't solve as a doctor, and they want to be able to solve them. Because that's where you get into medicine. You're supposed to be helping people, not just filling in paperwork. So um, those are the big pull factors, but the put the push factors, sorry, but the big pull factors, though, for sure, I wanted to have a job that could utilize my creativity more. You have to be creative when you've got very limited resources and still have to see all these damn patients. 100%. So that was creative. But then, like actually using graphic design skills, you know, um copywriting skills, that you can do that in UX. Um, being able to go to a nine to five work schedule, being able to have a line on the weekend consistently, you know, being able to wake up at night and then go back to sleep because you're not doing a night shift.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's a completely, completely different thing, field, I should say. That that's it. That's it. I can relate because I used to be an engineer, an aircraft engineer, um, trained as a avionic test system specialist, but ended up um on aircraft and doing shift work. And unless you have experienced that, and a lot of folks maybe who might be listening to this, maybe they haven't. Um shift work for stop. That I think that should be banned. I really, really do think it should be banned. Um, humans are not designed to do something like uh four days on, four days off, and then immediately follow that with a seven day on, seven day off. And sometimes that's mixed up with 24-hour sessions, you know, or a block of three night shifts. Because somebody has decided that human utilization is more important than safeguarding humans.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's weird. It is. And in healthcare, in healthcare, it's particularly troubling because you need to provide services 24-7, which is a problem that has to be solved. That's not the issue. The issue is how you're using a workforce that is becoming less reliable because you're overworking them.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Because as soon as the pay uh the doctor is facing burnout and they have an error, is it really the clinician's fault? It becomes a bit of a philosophical debate.
SPEAKER_01Legally, it is.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yes, unless you can prove in a court of law, because that's what it always has to go to, has to go to a court of law to show all the context, and then for a judge or jury to then conclude that actually, in context, this clinician actually has diminished responsibility here. That's if it even gets that far, if the if the clinician even is willing to fight because it's just exhausting. But um, but yeah, it was it was I didn't really I faced it, but I was in the field for three years. So I faced it a lot, but not in a back-breaking way, I suppose. Um but there's those that have been in the trenches for decades. When you become a consultant, it does get a bit better unless you're a surgeon. If you have any surgical um responsibilities, it doesn't get I don't I don't believe it gets significantly easier when you're brutal until well, even if you move into the private sector.
Training, HCI Masters And Credibility
SPEAKER_01Um that's my observation. Only because I've got untold family members who are in the medical line and untold family members who are in the legal line. Um and that's yeah, if you're thinking, why am I speaking so authoritively on certain things, that's why. Um, yeah. So always had this thread of you want to be happy. Yes. And your happiness is predicated on helping other people be happy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Because as much as I can get joy from being on my own doing stuff for myself, I do derive a lot of joy from knowing I've been able to help others. It's why I do a lot of mentoring and coaching, you know. Um it's important that I do my part to make the world a better place. Because if everybody was to actually do that, the world would be a hell of a lot better than it is now.
SPEAKER_01Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me. Yeah, we can do everything that we can do. Uh, and it sounds like you definitely have been and are. So just to recap, there you were at school, not really getting much assistance, you've had to really hone even from an early age your resilience in order to fulfill that need, and that's incredibly clear. There's always been a need to bring happiness, to bring balance so that others can have a better just a better experience. Yeah. And so you lent into the medical line, okay, fine. Then you discover this weird, weird thing called design and UX specifically, saw a niche in the market, and just jumped on it.
SPEAKER_03Is that right? Yeah, that's it, that's it. So when I decided to go into IT, um, into digital health, it would be about a year, year and a half before I got my first job in digital health and got that clinical analyst role. And even at that point, when I first started a job, I'd never heard of UX in my life. I'd actually gone, it was because of a um a series of unfortunate events where colleagues either were no longer available because of them being sick, someone had to go on a funeral, I think someone else had annual leave or whatever else. But it then led me to have three intense days of training with the prototyping tool actual. I know it doesn't get a lot of press these days. I still like it as a tool, but anyway. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Conditional logic, boolean expression.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's it's a clever, clever bit of tech. So um the guy that taught me um on that workshop introduced me to UX. And I haven't looked back since once I realized that this was a career that I could go into, it's utilizing skills that to some extent were being utilized in medicine, the whole like diagnostic process. You have to go through a process to understand the problem to then find the best solution for it. And there's not just that there's a proper process for this, but there's rules. You're going to be using evidence to back up what you're doing. This is what you do as a doctor. It's scientific. A lot of people don't like to say that, but UX is actually an art and a science. It's not just, oh, let's push pictures, um, pixels around the screen. There's a science at play here, a long-standing one at that. Um, and so once I realized that that was a career, I was like, yeah, I have to get into this. And I found mentors. If I read an article, I liked what was being said, I would reach out to the author, which led to opportunities. Um, and on that journey, um uh Elisa, Elisa Delgado Mal, she she was really great at advising me in early stages of my career. She's she's to blame why I've got a master's in human computer interaction with ergonomics. But she said if you were to ever work on my team, you're going to need to have that degree. We've never had the pleasure of working together, um formally at least. But um, but yeah, that was a necessary step, that master's degree, to really solidify my understanding. As much as a lot of what I learned in the end was on the job, um, you don't know what you don't know. And it's using the right language, and you get a level of credibility when you've got a master's as well in that field, particularly at that stage of my career. And also um in that stage of the industry, back in you know, um uh you know 2015-2018 sort of time frame, degree still meant quite a lot in our profession. So um, so yeah, that that was quite a necessary step, I think. Um I don't have any regrets doing the masters. Bloody expensive though.
SPEAKER_01Um, but yeah, I think um I don't I I just I still don't understand it. I mean, when I was doing any kind of learning, um I got a free ride. Yeah, because I I started off with doing an apprenticeship, and then depending upon your performance and everything, then the company would pay for your um schooling.
SPEAKER_03And that's how it should be, really. You should be getting supported by um by these employees.
SPEAKER_01So British Airways Engineering, back in the day. Thank you very, very much. Doesn't exist in the same format, but um yeah, I was very, very fortunate. And I'm still a very firm believer that access to education at any level um needs to be a lot more easier. Oh, for sure. My my the my little brain cannot even touch the edges of why it is so damned expensive. Well, I know why, because people want to make money out of it. Yeah, but ethically, what it it it it makes no sense. Zero. We have we have communities of people in the millions who love to teach, who love to nurture, who love to mentor, and there are lots and lots and lots of people who want to learn and be taught and be mentored. Um and with the technology that we have now, why is this such a challenge?
Inequality, Policy And Health Outcomes
SPEAKER_03Yeah, as you've alluded to, it's it's the greed, it's people wanting to make money from it. Because making money to s to live well is fine. It's just this extreme wealth causing, as a segue, I suppose, health inequalities where people, simply because of where they live and the amount of money in their bank account, are more likely to die. They're more likely to suffer when they go to hospital. They're more likely to have more advanced disease when they go to hospital. Just simply that statistic of them having lower income, poorer housing, poor quality of life, poor health. Um, but then at the other extreme, people who have got extreme wealth generally are going to be much healthier. And uh we need to fix that imbalance. It's one of the things I've been doing my part as a clinical UX professional to try and try and change. But I can't I can't do it just in my role. I can impact it a lot more than as a doctor, but this is really down to the politicians, it's policies that are in place.
SPEAKER_01That's how you think these things. I I I wish I could get the opportunity to speak with some of these um politicians.
SPEAKER_03Maybe I will. Maybe I will. No, no, if they're ready for you, to be honest. I don't think they'll ever be ready for you. LO me, why? Why would they not be ready for you? Too much logic, too many facts. They'll they'll be overwhelmed because you know they'll love to spin, spin their yarn and and fob you off, but they will simply have to curtail the conversation because there's no nonsense that they'll be able to say that you wouldn't be able to counter. And so they will ultimately fail any any conversation.
SPEAKER_01I'll I'll take that. That's very kind. But we can take the conversation in two very, very distinct directions. Um, and you've touched on the social impact and the inequality um within society because of this disparity of wealth, this, if you like, mismanagement of resources. Um but where do you see this this this lovely thing called artificial intelligence? Hmm. What's what's your view on that? I guess first of all, broadly, and then perhaps we can explore where somebody from your perspective, which I think is quite unique, how can artificial intelligence be utilized appropriately within the space that you're occupying? So that's healthcare, that's clinical UX, that's everything to do with regulatory bodies and adherence to standards, etc. etc.
SPEAKER_02So, first of all, artificial intelligence. Oh, what do you think?
SPEAKER_03Cautiously optimistic. AI is not a new technology. I've not I've not been into AI, you know, I didn't train in IT as such. Um at least these decades and decades of work has been going into this. It's just that there happened to be a lot of media tension and then a lot of easy access to AI over the last few years. That's what's made people have this perception that AI is a new technology. It is not. Because the advancements that we've made in the last few years is riding on the backs of decades of work from loads of um professionals that will never be named, unfortunately. So I'll highlight that. So that's one of the reasons I'm cautiously optimistic is that there is an overinflated view that AI can solve all problems because it's such a great new technology. It's not a new technology, as just said. And it's only great if it can really solve problems. Technology is the application of science to solve problems. That is what technology is. It's a physical or digital manifestation of science to solve problems. And there's many instances where someone doesn't understand the technology, that when they go and use it, they are more likely to do harm than good. That's why I say I'm cautiously optimistic. When we look at that in healthcare, we're hearing all the time, every day, if you look for it, there's going to be a story of someone who's used a genitive AI tool, told it his life story, told it his medical issues, submitted even some reports or even imagery, not even the reports, but imagery, blood tests and the like. And they've been told, oh, it seemed like you might have XYZ. It's not necessarily wrong, but there's still a level of context that is completely shaped by a non-clinician that's making it come to that conclusion. The non-clinician I'm referring to is the patient that's submitted all this information in. And it's also been shaped by bias content that it's been trained on. Training material. The context that a clinician would have doctor, nurse, specialist, doctor, specialist, nurse, whoever, the context that they have is also their own training to identify disease and understand severity of specific symptoms, specific disease, context of the patient that allows certain treatments to be more or less useful or appropriate or likely to help. That is significant more knowledge that the human will have access to through training and through their investigatory means from talking to patients to different investigation, whatever it is, or latest literature, whatever it is, that allows the human to be able to diagnose better than the AI. Again, there's many instances that AI is saying, oh, we might have missed that, we might have missed that. Maybe it wasn't missed. Maybe it has been downgraded because, in context of what else is going on, we're not focusing on this red herring. And there's so much hype about AI because of the fact that it can process information far quicker than a human, ultimately, that it will therefore be better than a human. And there's a fallacy there. You're making a leap, intellectual leap, and you're like, because it can process information better, it would therefore come to better conclusions and make better decisions.
SPEAKER_01It's not as simple as that. It's this extrapolation from my perspective, right? What you've described, and you've described it so eloquently. You've really, really described it so eloquently. And listening to that, it just reaffirms what I've observed in completely different sectors. So your observations, and keep me honest here, please, are broadly are very, very agnostic. Because if the data integrity is not there, and if the operating models are not there, bad things are going to happen.
AI In Healthcare: Promise And Pitfalls
SPEAKER_03The best way to know that it's the case, right, is would you want to go to a hospital that's run by first-year medical students, fifth-year medical students, doctors who have only just done that specialism for a few months, versus doctors who've done it for 10 years? You're always going to want to go with the people that's not just got more knowledge but also more experience. Always, time and again.
SPEAKER_02Can I can I add something to that? If I may. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01I would want a doctor looking after me whose demeanour is also appropriate. Yes. And I I'm gonna embarrass you here. I think your demeanour is amazing. Thank you. You you have always come across as a human, a carer, somebody who is not just super smart because you've qualified and you've done all of that, but you've done the graunch work, but you still maintain such a lovely demeanor. You always have. I would rather have someone like Dr. Giles coming to see me. As opposed to some other, no doubt, very, very good, and they have been, but they don't have that. They don't have your demeanor.
SPEAKER_03It's a balance that needs to be reached because I remember whilst at medical school, me and a fellow medical student, we were in a third year. We saw a patient run this respiratory ward. And we did the medical clerk, and that's to take in the history from them to know what's gone on why they're in the hospital. Right? We're then having to practice the art of presenting, presenting the history to the team, to the consultant, and a fifth-year medical student interjects like we didn't do anything that day. Remember, we're in a respiratory ward. So there's certain aspects of the medical history that's particularly important. So they list it off, and then um the consultant is like, oh, um, so how many cigarettes does this patient smoke? Obviously, common sense cigarette smoke is gonna impact someone's health. And this medical student says, Oh, they don't smoke. This patient smoked, I think, 20 to 30 cigarettes a day.
SPEAKER_02Whoa.
SPEAKER_03But what will I highlight this is that people have this attitude of, well, I've got all the information and I'm really smart. But if you don't follow a right process, but also you don't present yourself in such a way that patients trust you to just offload everything to you. Be proactive. Because if that patient's in the hospital and has got um cancer, got severe disease, which was the case for them, it's not their first time they've spoken to a medical student. They know what stuff to say. So they would have been proactive in saying certain things after a while. But that I don't believe that patient was so forthright with that medical student. Because, as you said, demeanor. And this is one of the dangers. If I get back on this topic of AI, AI is trained, almost all Gen AIs are trained unless you give it instructions to override this. It's trained to just please you, to give you what you want. Which is extremely dangerous to do as a doctor. My job is to get the patient healthier as best as possible. And if I can't make them healthier physically, at least give them the knowledge so that they can um spend the rest of their life in the most positive and productive way as possible. If I've had to break some bad news. AI doesn't think like that, doesn't actually care about you. It's not a person, it's not actually intelligent, it's it's artificial intelligence, hence the name, right? But it's been programmed to just try and please tell you whatever you want to hear. And if you don't know any better, so the consultant knew this patient, but also knew that we need to be told explicitly whether the patient smokes or not. It's essential questions we ask for all patients, actually, but particularly in respiratory medicine. So they knew what they wanted to know. But if you're using AI and you don't know the information that it's trying to discuss with you and share with you, when it's hallucinating, you won't know any better. And this will happen even for clinicians, let alone for patients in healthcare.
SPEAKER_01So you said at the outset that you are quietly optimistic.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, cautiously optimistic. Cautiously optimistic because when AI works, it's very, very powerful. Its ability to distill huge amounts of data into a short summary where if you know that data source, it's very powerful. Whether you're doing that as a UX researcher or you're doing that as a clinician who is ruling out differential different diagnoses, different context, but still the same principles, loads and loads of data to come to a conclusion, or at least come to a summary. AI is very, very good at that. It is. And we need to be utilizing that more by recognizing that there's plenty of data points that it simply won't have access to or won't know how to accurately weigh up. Like a great example, right? For those, if you're not seeing us, we identify as um black, South Asian, right? Rice is, I would say, a substantial part of our diet. And if you've got type 2 diabetes or type 1 for that matter, you're supposed to be climbing down on that. But to tell a black or Asian person, pan-Asian person, yeah, you have to cut out the rice completely is almost, well, it's virtually an insult. It's saying to actually stop part of your cultural heritage, it doesn't mean the person won't do it, but it's a massive deal to say something like that. And I don't, I don't assume that AI will understand cultural nuance like that unless it's explicitly trained. And even then, it's going to be on a case-by-case basis with the individual that you're dealing with. And it's this sort of processing of information that AI isn't very good at. And it won't be good at it for quite some time. I think you might eventually get there because people are actively trying to solve that problem. But these are the sorts of things I have to think about as a UX professional. And I definitely had to think about it as a doctor as well.
SPEAKER_02The this this kind of insight is priceless.
SPEAKER_01It's absolutely priceless because so many folks, myself included, we'd run off and we'd make all manner of assumptions because we've got a little bit of knowledge. Yes.
SPEAKER_03So that's a little bit of knowledge can be extremely dangerous. Yes. But memories, we had um very interesting sort of lecture week in our first week at medical school. One of the things that didn't happen to be true for me is we were told that we'll probably marry someone that's in this room. That definitely was the case for a few people in my year group. But the other thing was there was, I think it was like a fifth-year medical student came and he was speaking to one of the professors, and they were having a general discussion about having too little knowledge or just a little bit of knowledge as a patient. When you have too little knowledge, it's very hard. Well, it's technically impossible to give informed consent. How can you give informed consent consent based on you understanding something if you don't understand it? There's a failure of informed consent if the patient doesn't have enough knowledge about what's going on. And then when you just give them a little bit of knowledge without context, without additional insight about it, like, well, if there is a lump in your body that can be um called a tumor, and tumors can be cancer, without additional knowledge of benign and malignant, you know, about um, you know, uh the spreading of disease, metastasis. People just hear that, oh, I've got this lump on my skin, I must have skin cancer. And it's not obviously it's not as simple as that. But that's literally what's going on is that people take a little bit of knowledge and then go to something that AI and then come to all kinds of crazy conclusions. They were doing it before just with a Google search. It's even worse now with with AI. And that little bit of knowledge is extremely, extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it can set somebody off in a completely the wrong direction, but it can also create so much anxiety. And in certain situations, that increase in anxiety is gonna exasperate the condition.
Culture, Consent And The Danger Of Half‑Knowledge
SPEAKER_03That's right. Well, for any disease that you have, any episode of ill health, whether it's physical or mental, there's still an aspect of healing that is ultimately tied to your mood and your optimism of getting better. That's why, whether people are religious or not, they're like, oh, I want someone to pray for me, or people have prayed for me, or um, I actually I'm hopeful I'll get better. Any the positive mindset that in itself has a direct relationship to your immune response. So being of a more positive, upbeat mood doesn't mean you have to be happy and excited. Like if you've been given a terminal cancer diagnosis, that's terrible. But where you feel like you've got something to live for and you want to live actually will have some influence over cancer. That in itself is not going to cure cancer, but it has an unknown impact on an individual level, but still a positive one that it shouldn't be ignored.
SPEAKER_02100%.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_03And it's easier said than done, but you know, it's important to give people reminder, especially I don't know what is going on with the lives of people that are are hearing this right now, but you could be going through something and just being given that word of encouragement that things could get better would make all the difference.
SPEAKER_01Hugely important, particularly in this day and age, and you know, the volume of ambiguity, which is the catalyst for so much anxiety for everyone, it seems. Um finding finding something that gives you a boost to be diligent enough to think, okay, you know what? Yeah, all of this is going on, or I've got this condition, keep it in context of this conversation, let me find something that's literally just gonna put a smile on my face. Let me go and help somebody. Let me just pop in, see how they're doing, say hello. How are you? I haven't spoken to you in ages. Just saying, just saying hi.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You know, what comes to mind with this is um digital health applications that are aimed at patients that should be doing exactly what you've just said. So we've probably got mindful apps on our phone or some app that's supposed to help us track our health, and it gives us notifications that we become desensitized to, that we just give up on. Or you've even got an app that is for chronic illness that you would use when you're sick. And when I say when you're sick, I mean that if you've got a chronic illness, you're technically always sick. But when you have flare-ups, which might be once a week, but more likely it could be once a month, could be a few times a year. So you're not necessarily needing to use the app every single day. You might be excited to, but after a while, just like with um uh friendship, if you don't nurture, you don't actually reach out, the other person doesn't reach out to you, that's it. You there is the relationship stalls. It doesn't mean it ends, it's just that there isn't that interactions anymore. And as a healthcare behavior piece, I see this time and again that we keep designing apps that create a great first impression, gives maybe a rush of euphoria to begin with, but then the reminders, they're just not really stimulating. And you never really felt much for that relationship in the first place, even if you were introduced by, you know, a doctor or very cool and charismatic um salesperson, whatever it is. And to your point about like checking in, making sure people are okay, but in a way that someone will be receptive to that interaction. We need that as humans to other humans, because still we hear of people that have died in their house and no one's known for years later. This still happens. It's devastating, but this still happens. But actually, we're spending billions on IT solutions where the patient hasn't died, but their health has certainly deteriorated and the app's done nothing to help. Um, that's one of the problems I'm trying to solve in my line of work and train up other people to do because you need those nudges. Everyone knows that they want to be healthier, but if it was as simple as people knowing that they want to be healthy, therefore they'll do what makes them healthy, I wouldn't I would be out of a job, to be honest.
SPEAKER_01The thing is, and this is this is you know, reading between the lines, it's so human. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02It is so human.
SPEAKER_01And yet we've lost that. When when I I mean I was I was so lucky, so lucky. Um a couple of weeks ago, I I got to walk um a friend of mine, I got to walk her dog. Haven't done that in I don't know how long. And filled me with so much joy, but then the dog. Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome dog. Super you know, brilliantly well trained and everything else. But when when they're meeting another dog, nine times out of ten, thankfully with this one, they were just so happy to see one another. Yeah. You know, whatever their rituals happen to be, sniff, whatever, um, tales are going crazy. Uh and yeah, you get two humans walking by one another, and you're just gonna ignore them.
SPEAKER_03Or even have an altercation, even. Yeah, you just there isn't that I it's a bit different with me. I live in the Midlands, um, here in the UK, and you can be a bit more friendly to strangers here, but most of the time it's still a little bit weird.
SPEAKER_01It's everywhere now is very, very cultural. There used to be a thing um in the UK, yeah. Um if you're from the north, you're more human, you're more involved, you're more interested. I think it's diminished a little bit, um, but it's still very, very noticeable. I can recall being in a corporate office not that long ago and somebody, yeah, visiting, you know, the big smoke, big HQ in London, and they're in a lift, and there had to be four or five other people in the lift. First thing in the morning, going up in the lift. She lit she literally, blessed her, just turned around and said, Well, don't any doesn't anyone say good morning? Doesn't anyone ask? How are you? What? This is this is everything I've heard of. I never thought it was like this, but it is like this.
SPEAKER_02And we all just kind of looked at each other. It was it's crazy.
SPEAKER_01It was crazy, but having conversations, having conversations like this, I think, are so important. Um I mean, we've known of each other and we've tried to do different things together for some time. But it's because of the effort that both of us made. It's because we wanted to learn about one another. We're sharing experiences. You were on TV, weren't you? I've been on TV a couple of times, if I'm honest. Oh, oh I know about one of them, um, which was amazing when I heard about it. Do you want to share a little bit about that? Is that okay?
SPEAKER_03Of course I can share. So I'm fairly certain you're talking about a time when I was on Come Dime with Me. Yep. Yeah. So that was um the Christmas special back in 2013. So we're going back more than a decade now. Wow. Um, it was very, very, very interesting.
SPEAKER_01Don't Giles Morrison come dine with me. Christmas special 2013. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03YouTube is your friend. Yeah, you can still find the episodes now. And they come up on Channel 4 every Christmas time.
SPEAKER_01Wow. And was it what is it? Okay, what else? Before we get into that, or a little bit more detail about that. What which other TV programs have you been on?
Behaviour Change, App Fatigue And Better Nudges
SPEAKER_03So um it was less programs. I was definitely on the news for BBC quite some time ago again. I feel like this was maybe like gosh, eight years ago, maybe a bit more recently, and that was about the fact that I had left clinical practice and um just the fact that doctors were leaving the medical profession, which hasn't really changed. If anything, it's gotten a bit worse. And before then, I was also on the TV for the Lord Mayor show. I used to do a lot of music with young people at my old secondary school and old primary school, in fact. And so we got a bunch of the children to learn how to play the violin. Some others were playing other more traditional band instruments, and we had a massive float. We called it the cultural concerto, our entry into the Lord and their show, and had a parade. And I'm biased, of course, but I think we had the the best float that year.
SPEAKER_01How did I know you were gonna say that? Okay, cool. I get it. That's cool. That's cool. Wow, that's nice. Any any more appearances in the offing, do you think?
SPEAKER_03No, well, technically, I was also on the bus for the Lord Mayor show for a parade when I was like I think 10 years old, but I was maybe on the screen for about 10 seconds, more in the distance. That's probably about it. Good stuff. But the come dine with me thing. Would you do that again? I would if I'm honest, I would love to. You're not allowed to. Like I can't do the couples one either, for example.
SPEAKER_01Once you've been on it, that's it. That's it.
SPEAKER_03That's it, that's it. Um, so I would love to go on it again. I I did enjoy when I did it. That was one of the reasons I even left medicine. I remember because it was Christmas theme, we had some of the guys that was in the worship team from my uh church who came together and did a whole bunch of Christmas carols, but we like remixed them to like Caribbean rhythms, reggae, calypso. So it was a huge vibe, right? And I was doing the African drum, um Jeff A drum, um, playing along. It was so much fun. And I remember at the end of that having a combination of tears of joy and tears of sadness of the fact that I was so incredibly happy. And as I'm saying it now, I'm a bit emotional. I was so incredibly happy and it had nothing to do with medicine. I was so incredibly happy because it had nothing to do with medicine. And um that was in my final year working as a doctor. Um, and that was definitely another important reflective moment to decide, yeah, I need to do something different now. It's not that I wanted to stop working as a doctor or as such, it's more that I wanted to put all of this knowledge to better use for others, but primarily also for myself. Because if I'm not in a good place, I'm no good to anybody. Patients, friends, loved ones. People can forget that you can be um so um selfless in trying to help others and then lose yourself and then neglect yourself and then suffer and then cause suffering. People don't realize that's that's the journey that you take. When you do me.
SPEAKER_01I think we need to share more about things like that. Um, I mean, I was recently on somebody else's podcast, um and we spoke very, very concisely and purposefully about you need everybody, everybody, you need to look after yourselves. Because if you can't and you don't look after yourself, you're not going to be able to help anyone else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It's why you're told that on the plane, put on your own mask before even your child's.
SPEAKER_01That's the same example that Adam used. Um and I can I can recall doing and having the same conversations, and I'm sure millions of other people did as well during COVID times. Um yeah. And it shouldn't just be in times where there is stress, there is anxiety. It really, really needs to be something that is shared, spoken about, um always that you have to look after yourself. And you have to look out, keep your eyes and ears open. People around you all the time. Um say hello.
SPEAKER_02Be polite. Care.
SPEAKER_01And I think I think as a society, particularly in a multicultural society, London gets a hell of a lot of stick. The UK gets a hell of a lot of stick, I'm sure loads of other countries and populations do as well.
SPEAKER_02Um but multiculturalism lends itself to empathy. Yes. Incredibly so and we really, really, really need to let that be more visible.
SPEAKER_01I think the best way to do that, and you've said it as well during this this sh short episode, I guess. Um the impact from a medical perspective of having a positive mindset of being surrounded by good energy and demonstration of care.
SPEAKER_02Why is that a bad thing? That's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_03It's it's a it's a it's an important thing, it's a necessary thing. Like where um you see in the movies, or if you generally watch um, it's a bit dark, but something bad happens in America and you listen to a politician, thoughts and prayers. It always comes up. If you're genuine about it though, it really is, um, has healing effects. At least, you know, trying to, whether you're religious or not, is just something about trying to bring positivity in that moment is healing people. And we need to normalize that. We need to see it as important and try and encourage it. Because again, when I look at my profession in clinical UX now, we're doing everything but the most basic, simple things of just checking in from a place of genuine care, of um giving a helping hand when we can. There's too much focus on just do this, payloads of money. It's the the newest, hottest thing, you should be doing it. If you want to be, you know, with the in-crowd, you should be doing it. Um, whether that's investing into it or using it as a product, like honestly, hype and really greed, profit before patience, these are things that are are driving uh design decisions, unfortunately, and leading to solutions that aren't getting the basis done, that aren't helping people just be um genuinely happier or genuinely empowered to um take on more control of their health, or as a clinician, feeling empowered to do what's best for the patient rather than just do what is necessary as a tick box exercise for whoever their employer is.
SPEAKER_02Dr. Giles, what an amazing, humbling segment to end on.
SPEAKER_01That's wonderful. It really, really, really is wonderful. Um, thank you for sharing. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Now, before before I let uh release you, as is um, yeah, just the way we do things. Yeah. Is there anything that you'd you'd want to say about yourself, the work you're doing? Um, where can people find out about you if they wanted to contact you, if you want to share any anything like that? Florida. Yes.
Joy, Self‑Care And Sustainable Service
SPEAKER_03So um I'm on LinkedIn. I tend to be on there most days. Even on my birthday, I tend to check in sometimes to see what's going on. So you can find me there, just search for Dr. Giles Morrison. You know it's me because there's a stethoscope emoji in the beginning of my name. For those who aren't already aware, if you use an emoji in your name, it's a telltale sign that it was some sort of bot that has messaged you on LinkedIn. Because they'll be scraping that. It's automating them taking your first name. So uh, yeah, that's why I use the emoji.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03Very, very useful. You can screen your messages very quickly that way. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You won't technically there's a profiler next. I can't remember the last time I used it. Don't try and find me there. LinkedIn is fine. You can find me on Instagram as well, I suppose. Um, feel free to reach out to me. You can go to my website as well, drjaresmorrison.com. I'm happy to offer my support and help with you on your journey in this career. Whether you're new to UX as a clinician trying to get into digital health, please do reach out. Um I'm happy to talk, I'm happy to learn.
SPEAKER_01That's fantastic. Dr. Giles, thank you so much again. Um incredible episode.