Moving from 2021 to 2022
A brief update on what's going on this year, along with some reflections.
Welcome back! If you’re new here, 👋🏾 I’m Ahash, an 18 y/o science enthusiast who’s interested in ML and crypto applications to the biotech and health industries. We’ve likely connected somehow either online, through a meeting, or at an in-person conference, and I wanted to let you in on my journey as I grow in science and tech.
This newsletter will be an update on the projects I’ve worked on as well as new experiences, and reflections I’ve had over the past year.
Medflow: Smarter Scheduling and Patient Insights
About the Project
From my own experience at clinics and hospitals, I’ve sometimes wondered why procedures, such as appointment bookings to optimize time aren’t smarter and why long wait times exist. When I dug deeper with my friend Jatin on the issue, we found that because specialist appointments tend to be booked out months in advance and some patients don’t have a family physician in the first place, they resort to the ER in hopes of getting a quicker appointment. This causes a lot of non-urgent cases in the ER, hence, long wait times.
To tackle this problem, we started building Medflow; our hypothesis was that we could use a series of algorithms to give a diagnosis to patients online. We’d flag things that we weren’t sure of, aspects of patient history that were concerning, and evaluate how complex the case was. Our platform would then be able to schedule patients more accurately to prevent unproductive gaps in specialists’ schedules and point their attention to important aspects of the patient’s history. This would make the consultation more productive, faster and produce higher levels of patient satisfaction.
Progress
When working on Medflow, we spoke to health care professionals working on the front line and on the management end. We created a rough UI design and planned to use an API provided by Infermedica to get started on our MVP. The project is couldn’t go further because there were a few data regulations we would have to work with in addition to finalizing our target market. I may continue it down the line, but I couldn’t prioritize it this year.
Unique Experiences & Learnings
NFT.nyc
When I think about great experiences from 2021, NFT.nyc was one that especially stuck out to me. Thanks to Brandon Kumar, Ric Burton, and the Layer3 team, I was able to travel to New York and see inspiring innovation with NFT’s and blockchain.
One of the most valuable aspects of the trip was seeing the diverse applications of NFT’s. Unlike other conferences, the people there were using NFT’s to help artists, charities, and other industries to solve a broad range of problems.
Because of this experience, I now think about the future I want to help build. With new technologies like Blockchain and Machine Learning, there are now solutions to problems that we once accepted as “normal”. The question that I now try and answer is what process and journey do I want to follow to build the future? Pursuing experiences over rewards makes the journey more enjoyable, and figuring out which skill sets I have and what value I want to provide to the world is critical in optimizing my roadmap for success.
Reflections & Thoughts
Over the course of the past few months, there were a lot of times where I had to reflect and think about my trajectory. Is what I am doing something I am interested in? Would I be happy if I failed? Here’s a dump of a few lessons that I thought were valuable.
1. Have a strong why
I’ve heard this from many people over the past few months but it was mainly told in the context of starting a company or working hard in general. I think this idea applies to a broad range of things, whether it be having a productive morning routine or starting the next unicorn.
For even the smallest of tasks such as waking up without snoozing the alarm, I now believe that over discipline, a sense of acceptance is what gets me to accomplish things.
If I don’t have a reason to do something, just doing the task for the sake of it feels mindless. This is also true if I’m doing it to impress others, such as to flex that I’m waking up on time. I just can’t accept doing something difficult.
On the other hand, if I have a strong reason, even if I don’t feel excited to do the task at that moment, I just accept that I have to do it and begin to feel neutral towards it.
My theory is that habits such as waking up early have their benefits; you just need to figure out if you truly want to reap those benefits which lead you to accept the fate of doing something hard regardless of how excited you are in the moment. If you don’t have a good “why”, it feels too stressful.
I have yet to test this idea extensively, but I will continue to update you on this.
2. Figure out what you’d be happy being "average” at
I’ve realized that everyone’s success always looks nice. The fame of being a great actor, the power of a politician, and the wealth of a CEO make the roles seem amazing. But every successful person I’ve been obsessing over dove deep into acting, business, engineering, or their respective domain. They were once “average” in that field and you can argue that their interest pushed them through it. Not all of us would be happy perfecting our acting skills for years so it makes less sense to feel jealous over the results they’ve achieved as we would’ve hated the process to get there.
I realized that whenever I get caught up with people’s success, it’s best for me to think about the journey they went through. Thinking about the field I would I’d be content failing in isolates the icing of money, fame and helps me identify the process work that I would most enjoy to optimize my chances of success.
3. A good decision is based on the expected value, not the result
It isn’t rare for us to see someone take a road we avoided, and watch them succeed. Whether that means taking a different career path, betting on a stock, or any other random decision in life. We often think “dang it, if I just bought that stock, I’d be a billionaire now”.
I now think of decisions in the following manner: Suppose someone told me, “If you jump off a cliff and survive, I would give you $10,000.” They note that the chance of death is 99%. I wouldn’t do it. Why? Well, in that decision, it’s likely I would die. The expected value is not great: death. Even if someone jumped off and survived, I would still stand by my decision. 10 grand is not worth my life.
This is extreme, but it applies to almost all of our decisions. We look at the result and regret things, but we don’t realize that the best decision was one that chose a preferable probability.
Here’s an example of the principle that is less extreme: Your friend bought bitcoin a few years ago. He’s rich. You could’ve bought bitcoin but at the time, the chance that it would rise in value seemed too low. Buying bitcoin would mean having a low chance for a high return, and not buying it could lead to a high chance for a good return (you could invest in a safer stock, or do something of higher value to you with that money). The expected value for not buying bitcoin was better, so even if your friend took the chance, your decision was the best one (for your individual case).
I’m still changing my mindset from being results-based to probability-based decision-making. But it doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time.
This was inspired by a webinar done by iCanStudy.
Next Steps
As I close the 2021 chapter and move on to 2022, I’m moving my focus towards building new skills and gaining knowledge. I hope to do the following:
Learn about Machine Learning or a topic I’m interested in
I think Machine Learning has numerous applications to biology and healthcare. I want to see if data analysis is something I would be interested in even if it is used as a tool to advance a project I’m more passionate about.
Meet more people
I’m lucky to have met people with similar values and been in communities with so many like-minded individuals. However, I feel that I can accelerate my journey by digging more into these communities and getting to know more of you at a deeper level. If any of you want to have a call just for fun, reach out!
Focus
With powerful tools like Linkedin, Twitter, Social Media, and online resources, there are so many possibilities as to what I could be doing.
I think that to reap all of their benefits, I should focus on something I’m most interested in. I still have to decide what this topic, skill, or project will be, but I want to sharpen my ax and skills before diving deep!
…And that’s a wrap! If you were with me till the end of this newsletter, you’re a legend. Thank you for following my journey, and I hope 2022 is the year of growth we hope it will be.
Stay safe,
Ahash Ganeshamoorthy