Understand flagged blood test results while you wait for your doctor
When her portal showed elevated carbon dioxide and a low anion gap, 76-year-old Judith Miller asked Claude to explain them while she waited for her doctor. She used what she learned in follow-up messages. Her doctor ordered a repeat test plus one she suggested, and both came back normal.
Try it yourself
What you get
A plain-English explanation of flagged lab values and a short list of questions for your doctor.
Tools
- Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini
- Lab results from your patient portal (personal details removed)
Steps
- Copy the results from your patient portal, removing your name and other identifiers.
- Ask the assistant to act as a clinician, and ask about one flagged value at a time.
- Turn the answers into questions for your doctor and send them through the portal.
Copy-ready prompt
Act as a careful clinician explaining results to a patient. My age/sex: [ ]. Relevant conditions/meds: [ ]. Here are my lab results with reference ranges: [paste, no name or ID numbers]. For each value outside the range: what it measures, common harmless and serious causes, and how worried to be on a 1-5 scale. Then list 3-5 questions I should ask my doctor. Don't diagnose me, and tell me if anything needs urgent care.
Watch out: Chatbots can be wrong. Remove personal details before pasting, and talk to your care team before acting on anything.
Proof / source
Second-hand report NPR / KFF Health News reporting with a named patient and physician commentary.
In their words
It helps me organize my questions and do my research and level the playing field.
Related
Have Claude build a timeline visualizer for agents spawning subagents
@alexander__main started Harvard CS2680 assignment 1 (agent loop).
Discussion
Turn a lease, job offer or contract into a one-page brief before you sign
@RoundtableSpace posted a copy-paste prompt for Claude that reads a document you're about to sign and returns five plain-English bullets…
Cut a $195,628 hospital bill to about $32,500 by checking it against Medicare rules
After his brother-in-law died following four hours of emergency care, Matt Rosenberg had Claude look up what Medicare pays for each billing code.
Go from a 25 kg to a 70 kg squat in six weeks with Claude as your gym coach
After 10 years of gym sessions without progress, Brendan McNulty logged every set to Claude.