140 - Jess Dove London - Turnto - the app that aims to revolutionise healthcare

Episode 140 of the Long Covid Podcast is a chat with Jess Dove London, CEO of the startup "Turnto". Jess tells the story behind Turnto and how it's now helping people with ME/CFS & Long Covid.

We talk about the app, it's main features and how it can help.

Have you enjoyed the app? Let us know!

https://turnto.ai/download

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  
Hello and welcome to this episode of the long covid Podcast. I am delighted to be joined by Jess today, and we are going to be talking about the new app called turnto and what it is and how it can help. So a very warm welcome to the podcast today.

Jess Dove London  
Hi Jackie and everyone.

Jackie Baxter  
So fun to have you here. Um, maybe to start with, would you just say a little bit about yourself and what it is you do, I guess. 

Jess Dove London  
Yeah. So I'm the founder of a health tech platform called turnto, which we can talk more about. Um, I'm also, uh, someone with lived experience in health space. So I actually had, it's really funny. I don't often like talk about it, but I did have MECFS severely for 12 years ago, for two years, and then I also have kids with cerebral palsy. 

Jess Dove London  
So being a patient advocate has been part of my life journey, and I've always sort of been in the space of social impact work, worked for a bunch of groups, or founded a few different things, and just love building things with people. 

Jackie Baxter  
And, like, what gave you the idea for an app? Was this something you'd done before? Or did you just wake up one morning and go, Hey, I've got this great idea. And I say that because that's exactly the sort of thing that I would do. I would wake up one more morning with this, like, ridiculous idea,

Jess Dove London  
I do that. Yes, yes. I mean, it's a bit of a story to how it sort of came about. And, like, I think it's not about the solution. I think it's often about the problem. Like, you know, whether, like, for me, it was about experiencing the problem through many, many things, which I can sort of share about and then trying to, like, work out how to start solving the problem. 

Jess Dove London  
And what the app is right now is just, we've just gone live to long covid And MECFS, like, days ago. So it's very, very early.

Jackie Baxter  
So yeah, let's, let's get into this then. So, I mean, it's a very wide question, but what is turnto ? Maybe that's where we start.

Jess Dove London  
Yeah. So I guess, I guess it comes back to this experience I had, not from having MECFS, interestingly enough, because when I had that, it was many, many years ago, and I, the way I was impacted was I really struggled to use my eyes, and I used to rely on the dark like most of the day. And so I didn't, and there was just very little happening online, and I didn't know how to negotiate information very well. 

Jess Dove London  
But when I had my one son, he has a rare type of cerebral palsy, and I think having once been a patient and been at the end of a medical system when the answers aren't there, like it's a very destabilizing experience when you haven't, and you've always thought the answers are, they're like, Well, of course the doctor will know and will help me. 

Jess Dove London  
But having had that lived experience, and not having that, and then having my son when he was diagnosed, he was 18 months old. And I went along to this medical appointment, I had this big wad of research papers, and the consultant just said to me, don't bother reading any of that. Nothing's going to help him. There's nothing you can do. Like, good luck. Goodbye. Very seriously, that was the experience. 

Jess Dove London  
And I think because I'd had my own personal story, I was like, hold on. Like, probably not true. Like, let's see what the crowd says. Let's see what research says. So I did. I had this experience, which I think many people have, of like falling into, like every rabbit hole you can find on the internet. And very, very early on, like, I found a treatment for him that we tried. I'm really into research, but this was kind of just a blog. I was very desperate. 

Jess Dove London  
It was late one night, ordered some piece of equipment. He was almost two at the time, and he could never sit. He just lay flat on the ground, and we tried this piece of body suit. It's like a proprioception suit, and he instantly sat up perfectly. And we took it all off, and he kept sitting and to this day he's got, like, a beautiful so we were like, what? Like, there's things we can do, but it's totally on me. 

Jess Dove London  
And that was the, probably the again, having had that experience myself, so I just thought life's given us an invitation. I went on this massive journey for a few years, reading every paper I had the health to be able to do what I couldn't do for myself at the time when I was unwell, hounding every world leader. 

Jess Dove London  
We ended up traveling the world, and I was sitting at an international conference for cerebral palsy, the first time they ever let health consumers attend. And I'm sitting in the session feeling very much like a fish out of water, and this world leader is just talking about one thing after another of these amazing treatments, and a lot of them were very accessible. They were not sort of expensive things, things you can do at home. 

Jess Dove London  
And I actually put my hand up in the conference and I just said, you shouldn't have to fly halfway around the world to learn about treatments like this should be available on my phone. And so that was it. That was the idea Jackie. I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to solve this. 

Jess Dove London  
And really, the problem that we want to solve is that health breakthrough information lives everywhere. It like lives in papers. It lives in trials and trial findings. It lives with end users, consumers, patients, whatever you want to use, the word lives with conditions and and the problem isn't just that it lives everywhere. It's that we're not capturing it quickly enough. 

Jess Dove London  
So things that could be working in small groups of people or subgroups, we aren't capturing it quickly enough for what us patients need. Yeah. So that's the problem of, like, what we want to solve, and yeah. 

Jess Dove London  
So I took that idea, I built a website. Very early on. I took our house deposit and decided not to buy a house, but to start a startup, because, you know, you get one life, right? And we built a product where we just found every treatment that we could that exists for cerebral palsy, which were hundreds of treatments. We got hundreds of treatment reviews. 

Jess Dove London  
And then we, last year, started building the app with the same problem that we want to solve is, how do we capture and share all the different health breakthrough information? And this is all health breakthrough information. So breakthroughs can be anything from a new medication through, to anything that improves your quality of life.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, this, this is amazing, because I think you're right that information, a lot of it is out there, but it's not always easy to find. And even like something like a podcast, is great because it shares all this information, but it's only good if you know it exists. 

Jackie Baxter  
And some people will go looking for that, and some people will actually not even have the kind of cognitive ability sometimes to actually remember that a podcast is a thing you know, and it would take someone to actually share it with them, like an app or like a person passing it on. 

Jackie Baxter  
So, yeah, this, this is really cool, and all of these things that are helping people you know, whether it's, you know, as you say, kind of breathing, or medicines, pharmaceuticals, whatever, you know, it's sharing that information, isn't it? So people have access to that. 

Jackie Baxter  
So when you get some doctors. I mean, like, like the one you described, right? He said, There's nothing we can do for you. It's like, well, actually, there's 1,000,001 things that we can do, because all of these people are trying them and are helping them. You just sometimes maybe need a little bit of help to work out where to start, don't you? Because it can be a bit overwhelming when you suddenly discover that, oh, my goodness, there's a million things. What do I try?

Jess Dove London  
100% and, like, crazily, for my son's case, like, there is actually, like, like, everything from the small, the total experimental through to surgeries that are offered all around the world for him. So, like, I don't know how she didn't even tell us that information, yeah, but that's exactly it. 

Jess Dove London  
There's actually lots of things happening on, like, so many levels, and we've had some incredible life changing experiences for him, just because we know about and like, thinking of a podcast, like, there's an amazing podcast in sort of the pediatric space that I know about, because I'm lucky enough to know, and I listened to an episode once about sort of a cutting edge treatment. 

Jess Dove London  
My son was an older kid going to school who was incontinent, and there was a breakthrough out of UCLA about using, like a Tens type device on your spine. It's been this breakthrough for motor learning. And we tried it. We tried everything, and within a few days, he was completely continent for like, a $300 machine. 

Jess Dove London  
And it's because I knew about the research. I listened to a podcast. I then contacted the world leader, one of the world leading researchers in this space, and he's they're actually now studying this. They're doing partnership work with this um, particular, uh, breakthrough. See it, that podcast changed my life and my son's life. 

Jackie Baxter  
That's amazing. I think going to your doctor as you do, you know you had this experience with your son. So many people with long covid and MECFS have had a similar experience where they've gone to their doctor and they've said, I have these symptoms. Some of them may say, I think I might have long covid. I think they might have ME. 

Jackie Baxter  
Or they might be getting the doctor to put those pieces together, and the doctor will turn around and say, Oh, well, yeah, I think that's what you have. It's nothing we can really do. You're never going to get better. It's all about managing your condition. And this is kind of you and like, Oh my goodness. Like being told that, like, that is horrendous, and it's also not true. 

Jackie Baxter  
So I think obviously a doctor can't turn around and say, Oh, well, you need to take this pill and that's the treatment, and you're going to get better and you're all good. It's not like antibiotics for a strep throat or something. But I feel so strongly that we should never be talking about what we can't do. It's all about what we can. 

Jackie Baxter  
And people are recovering. So saying that you can't recover isn't true, but obviously we do need to make sure that this information is getting out there to the patients and to the professionals, I suppose, which I guess brings us back to the app, because this app is for both those groups, I think. Is that right?

Jess Dove London  
Yeah, so we didn't intend that in the beginning, and it's definitely not set in stone. So we might, we might change, if it's sort of what advice from the community is. I mean, you know more than I do about the trickiness of the connection between the two conditions. 

Jess Dove London  
So yeah, we did start with them separate, and then we got a lot of input from people with lived experience and researchers around a lot of the crossover between symptoms, sort of the physical similarities, and some of, not all, but and some of the physicality of what's been impacted, and the clinical management, and also, a lot of people in the community were telling us they were following and enjoying content from both, like there was a lot of like content that was very valuable, from pacing to breath work to some of the lifestyle things that were super valuable. 

Jess Dove London  
So it's definitely not set in stone. And we have the ability in the app to, if people give us, you know, ready, getting feedback of mixed things, to just personalize or just, you know, make it that you only are in one community. And a lot of leading organizations are doing this all across the space. So we did speak to a bunch of people, but it's not set in stone, and I'm not an expert. We are building the app with the community like truly. 

Jess Dove London  
So we did launch in cerebral palsy already, and we have 1000s of users who have a lot of people have a lot of that found a lot of value, because our product is about every day being able to stay on top of what's coming that matters to you. And that's why we're going to other conditions is because the community have found value, but we are very, very we've already done so much to the app just from work coming to these two new conditions like it's made the app so much better. So yeah, we will see how it evolves.

Jackie Baxter  
That's great, isn't it, because everything should evolve as you learn more, as you gain more experience, as you work with people, as you get feedback from them. And you know, you're never going to be able to please everybody, because, you know, everyone's different. 

Jackie Baxter  
But I guess, you know, like, like, everything that evolves. I mean, we've done this with our breathing courses, you know, we've been working to tweak them as we've learned, as we've done it more. And I think it's the same, you know, you you do improve things and work to make it the best you can for the most people. So I think it's awesome. 

Jackie Baxter  
Why did you call it Turnto - what was the story behind the name?

Jess Dove London  
Yeah, it's very hard to name things. I don't know if I'm sure 

Jackie Baxter  
like long covid podcast. 

Jess Dove London  
Well, that's good. It's good. You know what it is, but, yeah, we had a few names. I actually had this like moment where I had a friend reach out to me. So when my son was young, and we knew something wasn't right, it's sort of we had some similar experience to the ME, long covid, where there was a lot of being dismissed a lot. And I had some very, very significant experience of medical gaslighting. 

Jess Dove London  
But also then, like, on certain things that we're like, told you can't do anything, ignored around things were going wrong at home, or we won't be able to feed, or we couldn't sleep, or all these things, and no one was helping us, which was a very strange experience as well. Like to be like, hold on. Like, this doesn't seem safe or and I just had nowhere to turn to. Which is a bit corny. 

Jess Dove London  
But I had a friend who, two years after my experience, had the same experience, and it really gutted me, like, and she wrote me an email just how her daughter, her daughter was born with some health issues, and she just had this terrible experience in the health system where she was really judged and shamed and all these things. And she was just a mother. It was her fifth child. She knew what she was doing. And they just were, like, totally shaming her. And she's like, I have nowhere to turn to. 

Jess Dove London  
So it's a little bit like personal, but I just felt like I was just outraged that she was where I was, and it was years later, and that she was being given nothing when her daughter, there's like dozens of things that they could have been doing to help her daughter. Because I now know about those things,

Jackie Baxter  
it staggers me, you know, I think it's okay to say that you don't know, you know. And I think more people in the world should say that they don't know, because they don't. I don't know if it's society or what, where admitting that you don't know is like some sign of failure. It's like, you know, it's so taboo, I think, to say that you don't know. 

Jackie Baxter  
Whereas, actually, I think one of the most comforting things that happened to me during my illness was that I went to my doctor and I said, you know, I have all of this and this and this, and you know, this has gone wrong, and I don't know what to do. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he sort of sat down and he said, I don't actually know, but I will try and work with you to see what we can do, kind of thing. 

Jackie Baxter  
And it was admitting that he didn't have the answers that I just thought, like, Thank you for admitting that, rather than trying to put it on me or to try to, you know, bullshit me with something that wasn't gonna work or whatever. You know, people have experienced some awful things at the hands of doctors, you know, but actually, there are so many really good ones. So I think that's it. You know, having that openness to look into things, I think is amazing.

Jess Dove London  
The best doctors, like, I love doctors actually, like, even though I've had all these experiences. I think so there's some healthcare, just like you said, there's amazing people in the system. And the best people I work with always say, I don't know. But they don't say, I don't know, goodbye, it's like, I don't know. And then it's like, this, pause, like, well, what can we look into? What is a recent reading? 

Jess Dove London  
We work with one of the most amazing specialists. Like, he's a double specialist of genetics and neurology, and he's just like, like, every time we chat, oh, let's look in the last month, what is there being published. It's unbelievable that he can be so open, when he's like the most knowledgeable, but he's like, I don't know, but hey, I heard of this thing. Let's look into it. Let's read it. You know, there are amazing people out there. I think it's just that, unfortunately, when you don't understand something, or you're ignorant, you can go down another path. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah it's tough. I mean, there's so much pressure put on health professionals, isn't there? And I can't imagine, you know, working as a doctor, you know, it must be a really difficult thing to do, and I think, you know, some patients can be really awful as well, probably, you know, and expecting things and treating doctors in ways that they don't deserve either. So I think it can go both ways, for sure. 

Jackie Baxter  
But I think it's a really difficult position and and it's like, you know, the doctors need support as well, bringing us back to sharing of information, right? If the doctors aren't given this information, if they don't have it, then how are they supposed to help their patients? And you know, some doctors do have the time to go searching, and some probably don't, and some may have an interest for other reasons. 

Jackie Baxter  
Some may have a background in something that is relevant anyway, like someone who's been studying dysautonomia anyway is going to go, oh, okay, I know this. But someone who has never heard of it and has, you know, it's not taught in medical school is not going to have any idea. And you know, they're probably working like, stupid hours anyway. So, yeah, it's, it's really tough, isn't it? And, and I think that education piece is is huge. 

Jess Dove London  
I agree. I love it all. I think, yeah, that's why I would have been so impressed. Like, it's been super humbling coming into the long covid And MECFS space, even though I had that experience myself. I was never in the world like, of like the community, you know. I was living on my own, sort of on my own in it. But it's been very humbling to see the level of advocacy. 

Jess Dove London  
And even reflecting, because I'm more in the cerebral palsy world, like I feel like there's so much other conditions can learn from the community. Just on the power of advocacy, because it does feel like it's just mind boggling that medicine training isn't addressing long covid And MECFS and other autoimmune conditions due to the prevalence and the impact on quality of life. 

Jess Dove London  
And I actually did say to my best friend the other day, because I've been meeting all these amazing people like yourself, just doing things, just like you're trying to create a new story right for the condition and help other people. But I did say to her, I think if I hadn't had the lived experience of MECFS, it's like, make believe. You know, I look normal, I talk to you and I look normal, and I lie in the dark for seven hours, like it's a crazy, real condition. It just is not understood, like, but it's more understood now than it was 10 years ago.

Jackie Baxter  
And I think that's what makes it so difficult for people who haven't had that experience to understand, because you do look normal, but that's only when people see you. The rest of the time you're flat out on your back, or, you know, having to do breathing exercises in order to stay upright, or, you know, whatever all these things are. 

Jackie Baxter  
And I think nobody can understand an experience that they haven't gone through. I don't think. But I think long covid And MECFS. I think you know they're we call them invisible don't we? Because I think you know a lot of what is going on isn't that visible. You know, you may look fine, but you don't feel fine inside. You may appear fine when people see you, but they only see when you're having a really good day, the rest of the time, you're not functioning. 

Jackie Baxter  
And it's very difficult for people to relate to that, because everyone's been a bit tired. But like this, this is not that. And it's almost like when people try to relate, they actually end up making it worse sometimes. And you know, I think people, when they say that, they maybe mean well, you know, they're trying to maybe start a conversation, or trying to relate to your experience. 

Jackie Baxter  
But it's like when you know that your experience is like, so totally different to them. I think, you know, we can take that the wrong way as well, which then makes things worse. But I think, yeah, people just don't get it. If they haven't had an experience that's relatable, because how could they?

Jess Dove London  
It's very tricky. I think, yeah, it's, it's very diminishing. Or, I mean, it's just also not the truth. It's not right. I mean, people try to relate, but it's not the same. You're relating apples and oranges. 

Jess Dove London  
You know, even like in a different context, I remember being very tired after a hospital experience that was super traumatic. And I remember friends said the same thing to me, Oh just have a little nap. And I was like, like, this is, like, a deep physiological like, thing that I need weeks of work to, like, get through. But, you know, she wasn't intending to be unkind. She just had no understanding. 

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and I think that's a lot of it, isn't it? It's that, you know,  people aren't meaning to be unkind. They aren't meaning. I mean, some are, you know, let's be real. Some people are, but I think the majority of people aren't trying to be hurtful. They're probably trying to help. But you can say a well meaning thing in a totally wrong way, or it can be taken the wrong way. 

Jackie Baxter  
And again, I think it just deepens that divide, doesn't it, between, like the "Healthy People" and the long covid people. And there's already a big enough divide there, because, you know, of that sense of isolation and not being able to do things and not feeling part of life, I think, in a big way. 

Jackie Baxter  
So yeah, let's talk through some of the features. So I've been having a little bit of a play around with the app, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. So yeah, maybe you can take us through, like, some of the main things 

Jess Dove London  
love to, so the way that our app, the sort of first thing that we're offering, is just an easy, more passive way to stay on top of things that are really important to you. And at the same time, capture more things. So capture more things from people with lived experience and practitioners, and share that straight back to people. 

Jess Dove London  
I think there's a lot of different ways we can look for breakthrough health information, and it is all over the place at the moment, like you have to go and look at Google Scholar, and maybe you're on Instagram, or maybe you're on Twitter, or maybe you're in a Facebook group, and there's just lots of different conversations happening. 

Jess Dove London  
But what we do is we just give you a five to 10 minute experience every day where there's five to 10 posts, little bit like Tiktok in that it's full screen. You could just swipe through it, and we try and do all the content pieces, so from research papers to events to trials, and then there's a bunch of user generated content. So people sharing things, their Best Breakthrough, their best tips. 

Jess Dove London  
We've just brought on professional AMAs, so professionals sharing every day like and again, just trying to democratize access to some leading thinking and people who have, you know, sort of forging the way. And so, yeah, that's the core experience. Then we sort of take all that content and you can use search to sort through it. Then we have a feed as well. 

Jess Dove London  
And yeah, so that's the first value, is just being able to follow a bunch of tags that you care about, get it given to you in a more passive, easier to understand way. We make everything in more plain English. We're trying to make things more accessible. And we've had so much amazing feedback, even in the last six days, since we've been live, and we've already actioned a whole bunch of it to make it, particularly with some of the sensory stuff. It's definitely going to need some improvement. But, yeah, that's the first, the first experience. 

Jess Dove London  
And again, like, our problem is, our mission is to speed up breakthroughs for every single person. Like, it is just the beginning. And like, even in the last week, we have so much content that has been shared and the community, the quality of this community, we've literally as our team, everyone is like because we have human moderators who have lived experience everyone's having to help them, which we laugh about. It's a really good problem to have. 

Jess Dove London  
But the quality of what people are sharing is just so rich. It's a real testimony to like, how much people are wanting to share with others. So, yeah, we've got some really cool things coming up around, like, better ways to search that, better ways to have personalization. You know, we've got a really cool AI thing coming in so people can actually just get the power of that themselves, of how to find answers that they need or insights that they need. Yeah, so that's, that's the product right now, always changing that every day. 

Jackie Baxter  
And I love that you're kind of open to the feedback as well. I think, you know, it's coming back to the "I don't know" thing, isn't it? You know, that actually you're gonna make it better by listening to what people want, and that you're open to that, you know, means that it's gonna get better. I guess it's like you're saying, you know, helping people to find the right information that is appropriate for them. 

Jackie Baxter  
We talked earlier about the problem of finding information, and, you know, it getting to people, but it's almost like, if we end up with the opposite problem, where there's too much, and you're like, right, well, now I have all of the information, and it's in the palm of my hand, and actually, I don't even know where to start, like, Oh my goodness. So you know, there's being able to kind of personalize it to you. I think when I went through, it said, Pick your symptoms or something, so you can, you know, put in the things that you have, and then it won't send you stuff about tinnitus if you don't have it?

Jess Dove London  
Just so for all you early users, that'll get better over the next few weeks. So we actually haven't turned on all personalization, because we're waiting for feedback. And this is, again, like when we've been in cerebral palsy, like a bunch of people in the community didn't want overly personalization, which is super interesting, because it's a lifetime disease. 

Jess Dove London  
And so people actually like seeing the lifetime, because they want to see what adults are saying, and they want to see, so we're going to be bringing in more of that. For all you early users out there, tell us, because we can turn on extreme personalization, but we also can keep a little bit of like the main heading. 

Jess Dove London  
So for example, like, you know, yesterday, I know there was a new resource published on a definition for long covid, like, so that's at the front, but you know, there's always going to be this more like general, sort of important, important pieces. But yeah, we really want to hear from you, and we actually have a public website. We really our team is super experimental and so we've been loving it. 

Jess Dove London  
We put up a public website where you can put in what we should do better, and vote, upvote and downvote what you don't want us to do next. And you know, we really have listened so like, when we started this community, a few people were like, Oh, I don't want to use my own name. And we're like, awesome. Okay, we've changed it, so that's already changed. 

Jess Dove London  
And then people like, I don't want to use, like, some people use photos, and some people want an avatar. So we built this really fun avatar where you get, like, a really cool image, like, I really like it. Maybe no one else does, tell me if you don't like it, we're just tweaking stuff continuously. Or, like, you know, people didn't want to add this type of content information, so we changed it and

Jackie Baxter  
And, I guess, as well, like, in terms of the sort of long covid accessibility thing, that's going to be really different for different people. You know, some people struggle with screens. Some people struggle with, like, hearing things. So, you know, I suppose being able to sort of personalize in those sorts of ways as well. 

Jackie Baxter  
I discovered the other day that apparently red is quite a triggering color for some people, but not for everybody. And I'm thinking, well, how can you do that? If it's so different for everybody, you're never going to please everyone. But I suppose if you can personalize your own, then actually people can pick, you know, colors, for example, or content. Maybe, are you able to select whether you get written content or audio content? Is that something you can do?

Jess Dove London  
All the future dreams. At the moment, like we try - it's really funny. There's a bug right now if you're an early user, so all videos, probably, at the moment you're seeing, 50% of videos are captioned. So, like, we're trying to do things so it can be completely mute. Everything is text. There's that, but we have a long way to go on accessibility. I mean, we truly are trying. 

Jess Dove London  
Someone mentioned they hated something that was auto playing, and we just turned it off, like, literally within 10 minutes of getting the comment. So I think it's just a journey, and some things are really easy to do, like captioning, super easy with the technology. 

Jess Dove London  
The other day, someone asked for us to be multi language. And do you know, a few years ago that would have been, like, really, really hard to do, but we're actually like, that would be something you could do in a few months, just with the amazing technology that's come out. So it's a work in progress and it's going to make it better for everybody to be able to bring in these accessibility pieces.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, definitely. I think being an English speaking person in an English speaking country, and communicating with people largely, not entirely, but largely, in other English speaking countries, we're very privileged, I think. And we kind of forget that, you know, there's a huge number of people, certainly for whom English isn't their first language. 

Jackie Baxter  
And that, you know, we have a hard enough time getting hold of this content and sharing this content within one language. If you are of a different language, like that must be such a massively different problem, given that so much of the information shared is in English, and it's like, I feel like there must be a way. And maybe, as you say, maybe, you know, the technology is now at a point where it can really help with that

Jess Dove London  
100%. I mean, we could do it like, I mean, we are a small team, like we're a small startup. A bunch of our team are not paid. A bunch of our team are like, we are small and doing our best with limited resources. And, like, we could do it if we were doing nothing else, if we were, like, not fixing all the other bugs and trying to improve search and listen, you know, if we just wanted to do translation. It is incredible what technology can do right now, like it would, it's very achievable. So, yeah, exciting future, future things.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, it is. And I suppose it's part of this whole, like, you know, constantly, there's always going to be something that we could do better, isn't it,. And as more technology becomes available, you can maybe plug that in and it will give you a whole load extra stuff

Jess Dove London  
that's right. And that's what's happening with open AI and chatgpt, like, we actually brought in their one product called whisper, and it's super cool, because in cerebral palsy, a lot of people have speech which is not always clear. And we were doing a really bad job at subtitling, and we brought in this chatgpt, and, like, it's like, perfect translation. 

Jess Dove London  
And so I actually got a very emotional which is on, like, technology, I'm such a geek, because I was just like, my son has a speech impediment, and I'm like, There's no limitations. Like, you know, he can speak and get perfectly transcribed. Now, obviously it's not going to do every single person, but, like, it's so good that you're like, wow. Like, this can change the lives of people who are never understood. AI is understanding them and translate. And, you know, it's almost perfect subtitles.

Jackie Baxter  
I think technology can get a bad rep sometimes. I think because technology isn't the answer to everything. You know, 100% it's not. And like, actually, you know, we can get so caught up in technology that we forget that there is a world out there that we should be, you know, looking at trees instead of our phones. 

Jackie Baxter  
But I think at the same time, there's a lot of good there as well, if it's used in the right context, in the right way. And like you say, you know, for somebody who is never understood, to suddenly be able to have that capability, that would be amazing. So, you know, being able to harness technology in the right ways, I think, is something that is super powerful. I guess we just need to be careful about how it's used, and not having an I Robot situation

Jess Dove London  
100% I mean, I think it is really exciting, also for long covid And MECFS. I mean, I am a real techno optimist, but I think just the volume of knowledge that exists, it's very hard to, like, get a grasp on all that's happening, like, even for world leaders. So it's just something that technology can do. And like, we hope in the next few months, like things we're going to release, you know, a one stop shop website, we're going to release a whole bunch of stuff to the community. 

Jess Dove London  
And we think, you know, like, it's just there's so much potential to speed up knowledge or gaps, like, often, like trials, like, you know, they're all happening in certain areas, and there's just gaps everywhere. And like, often it's patient voices that aren't being listened to or are not setting the priorities and spaces. 

Jess Dove London  
So yeah, we've already built, it's not live in the app, because we, we're working it out still, but we do. We built this thing where you asked a crowd question, and the AI would go and find you six really good resources, like really good papers. And it's doing an amazing job. And it makes me really excited, because I just think one of the values in turnto is context and perspective. 

Jess Dove London  
Like, I don't believe patients need vanilla answers. They need nuance, particularly in a complex condition, because it's heterogeneous. You don't actually know what is going to work for you, if now's the right time, you don't want to be told, I don't think, yes or no. You want to be told the complexity. Well, in this group, it's working, or these people are liking it, or these are the side effects, or this is what the just you know.

Jess Dove London  
You want to know the whole spectrum. What is the latest scientists think about it? Who's opposed it? Who's for it, to make those choices? So, yeah, really, really optimistic about things that we can sort of improve that, that you know, the difference of being on social media where you hear a comment and you just don't know, like, is that something should you be doing that.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, yeah. And I guess, because so many people are DIY-ing it themselves, because that is the only option they really have. And you know, people that are recovering, people that are improving, they've generally done it through working stuff out on their own. I mean, certainly that was my experience. That was stuff that I found, you know, and that's great. But also, you know, let's share that information, and then we can sort of help other people to do things with maybe a little bit more knowledge. 

Jackie Baxter  
So how do people get hold of turnto?

Jess Dove London  
yeah. So we're in the app store. You just type in turnto, and I think it says daily health breakthrough. So come in, you just select the community, yeah, that it's very, very easy. We also are on a bunch of different social platforms, sharing what we're doing and things that the community are learning together.

Jackie Baxter  
And I will make sure that links and everything go in the show notes, so anyone can follow that and check you out and hopefully find it really useful. 

Jackie Baxter  
Jess, thank you so much. It's been so much fun chatting and hearing all about app and what led you to it and everything. So good luck with what it becomes. I'm excited to see.

Jess Dove London  
Thanks so much. And yeah, can't wait to hear more from the community on how we can keep making it better.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai