finance
Amateurs Use AI Tools to Build Apps for Relatives With Dementia, Cancer and Scam Risks
Pratik Desai, 34, used NotebookLM and Claude to synthesize 1,600 pages of his mother Smruti's medical records, an effort he believes saved her life three times. Other non-coders created dictation apps, scam detectors and monitoring systems while managing family crises.
May 16, 5:07 AM·3m read1 source
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Pratik Desai used AI platforms NotebookLM and Claude to create a tool that synthesized medical information. The AI tool told Desai that his mother Smruti was dealing with complications of a pulmonary embolism. He ran the hypothesis by his cousin, a doctor, and rushed her to the hospital.
The AI tool caught mistakes and misdiagnoses in Smruti Desai's medical records. Smruti had 1,600 pages of medical notes. Desai believes his workflow saved his mother's life three times. Desai, who is 34, stood next to his father Subhash in the family's living room in his childhood home in Roselle Park, New Jersey.
The space holds reminders of Smruti, who lived out her final days in a bed there. Desai checked his phone as messages from work arrived while he remained beside that bed. Hanna Miller crafted a no-code Chrome extension to review online purchases by her father who has dementia.
The extension addressed his tendency to order the same package repeatedly. Danesh Davar is 36 and based in London. Davar's mother suffered several hemorrhages in 2019 and lost some motor function including the ability to type.
He could not find dictation tools that fit her needs for under $500 a year. Davar built the dictation platform Talkativ for about $200 after working on smaller projects on the vibe-coding platform Cursor. Talkativ reached 200 sign-ups in its first three months with zero ad spend.
It processed over 12,000 successful dictations. A February study in Nature Medicine found that health advice from chatbots is often riddled with inaccuracies. Some vibe coders told Business Insider they worried their creations could backfire if expanded without developer input.
