In Episode 11 of MEDICUS – the podcast, we sit down with Devanand Anantham, who leads the new SingHealth Duke-NUS Medical Humanities Institute, to take stock of how far medicine has come, the potential of AI and why it is high time we reframe our conversations about health. 

Take for example Mrs Tan. The retiree likes nothing more than to spend hours tending to her garden, but recently her knee has been giving her a lot of pain, robbing her of the joy and serenity she enjoyed so much while gardening. To fix her knee pain, a knee replacement surgery is the best intervention. It will alleviate the pain. But will it give her the range of motion required to squat comfortably as she pulls out weeds and turns the soil?

To connect holistically with people about their wellbeing means to think about more than  just their physical health, Anantham argues. And that's where our humanity comes in, where we draw on our shared understanding of the world and what is important to us. No multiple choice questionnaire analysed by AI can—at this point—divine what we truly want as most of the time what we want is pain and discomfort alleviated, but what we need is to be able to bend our knees fully and enjoy the time we have.

Show notes:

Music from: Jay Varton (via iStock.com Epidemic Sound library)

Produced by: Nicole Lim, Senior editor at Duke-NUS

For more stories in this issue of MEDICUS, go to: www.duke-nus.edu.sg/medicus/2024-issue-2  

To discover more scientific insights and personal stories from Singapore with impact on the world, go to: www.duke-nus.edu.sg/medicus