Learn Rust, train doctors – Interview with Caroline Morton

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Tim: When you're new to working in an
emergency room, it's hard to avoid getting
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overwhelmed by the cognitive overload of a
continual stream of patient after patient.
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Device after device and beep after beep..
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This episode follows
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Dr. Carolyn Morton's career from
medical doctor to software engineer.
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It's a fascinating story that involves
learning to code, learning Rust, starting
a company, starting a new career, and
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having the ambition and determination
to know that it's the right thing to do.
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Caroline Morton: Uh, yeah, brilliant.
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Um, so I am running a company.
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It's called Yellowbird Consulting,
but it's soon to be Clinical Metrics.
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It's a medical simulation platform,
um, and the back end is built in Rust.
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What it essentially is, is
a virtual emergency room.
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So, um, I've.
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Well, we've created a way to make an unlimited
amount of virtual patients that are based
on the underlying epidemiology features of-
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We've got currently 52 diseases
in it and patients arrive.
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You start with three, and then they just
keep on arriving, much like real life,
except you'd never start with just three.
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And you have to take a history from a chatbot.
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You can order any investigation, that you
might want to in a real emergency room.
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You can order blood tests, you
have to wait for them to come back.
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Writing notes.
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The aim of the product is to improve clinical
reasoning, but it's also to test the cognitive
load and to really train people about that
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cognitive load, which I found in my experience is
just not well taught or, um, it's not even taught.
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It's like experienced as a junior doctor or
as a, as a medical student in particular,
where it's not just one patient at a time.
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You have to, you have to think, Oh,
I've got a, this patient, they're here.
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I've got to remember to chase
the bloods for this other person.
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Or this person I've sent for an x-ray.
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And you've got to be able to keep it
all in your mind and develop systems
that you can keep track of everything.
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And to be honest, that's, what's
really challenging when you're a
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junior doctor is not necessarily that
the content is so crazy difficult.
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It's the cognitive load of trying to
remember all of the things you must do.
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Tim: Do you also integrate aspects like, Oh,
the Charge Nurse is like demanding something,
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or the human dynamics of essentially being
in ED and being distracted, or like someone,
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Like, my experience as a patient.
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So, um, I happened to spend several
hours at our ED with my girls.
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My, um, uh, my six year old is
asthmatic and, um, and I've also
come off a mountain bike a few times.
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And so I.
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I'm aware of the kind of when you're stuck
in the waiting room, you spend a lot of time
observing the practice, or at least I do.
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And, um, yeah, and I have both sympathy and
extremely high regard for, uh, doctors in an
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emergency room because, um, Essentially [it]
is just a large series of difficult choices.
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At least that's what it seems to me.
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Is that accurate?
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Caroline Morton: I don't, I wouldn't
say necessarily that they're difficult
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choices because a lot of it is
protocolized, so, you know, there is...
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Tim: No, right, right, right.
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Caroline Morton: That you do, but it's,
you know, I think it's the volume.
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There's definitely a volume problem.
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You're also managing not only people's like
physical health complaints, you're also
trying to like manage their emotions of
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they're frustrated, or they're drunk, or
you know, there's all sorts of problems.
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And also...
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Tim: They're sore and tired and...
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Caroline Morton: Yeah.
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Tim: Totally it's, um, it's, and would you
imagine a junior doctor essentially playing?
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Their free time Is that the,
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Caroline Morton: Yeah.
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Tim: this essentially a game like
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Caroline Morton: Yeah, it's a gamification.
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Tim: Sim for example?
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Okay.
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Caroline Morton: It's a gamification.
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So we're in two medical schools in
Germany at the moment, hoping to
expand to the UK, maybe the US market.
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I've just taken the leap to go full time
on the company, having run it part time for
four years, with, two other co founders,
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including Maxwell Fliton, who you know,
he's quite big in the Rust community.
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Um, and we, yeah, so we just, we've
taken the leap, uh, going to try
and move it into the UK market.
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But in Germany, the way that it's, it's
used is it's embedded within the curriculum.
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So, um, they have a slightly different system
to, I know the New Zealand system is quite
similar to UK, but in, Germany, they seem to have
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these very quite long terms where you might do
cardiology and you have teaching at the same time.
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You might have cardiology lectures at
the same time that you're also going to
the cardiology ward So it's in a way more
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Tim: So that, that is, if you're going through
becoming an emergency specialist, that pathway
is quite different, is that what you're saying?
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Caroline Morton: Yeah, it's
really different in Germany.
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At least this is my understanding.
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So, with the medical schools, they
might have, the way that it's used right
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now is, or our tool, Clinical Metrics,
is that they, they do it every week.
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And, um, over like, say, six weeks or eight weeks,
and at the same time they're receiving lectures
on, you know, various heart conditions, say if
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they're doing cardiology, so they might see lots
of cardiology patients within our simulation.
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Um, but they don't, at least this is
my understanding, they don't really
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have emergency medicine as its own
specialty in the same way that we do.
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We have it in the UK.
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It's like you're, you're a, I know
you're a respiratory doctor and,
but you work in the emergency room.
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So it is, there's
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slight variations.
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Tim: Yeah.
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And I, I, I assume-
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there are both cultural and, uh, practical, sorry,
like the, the pathways must be quite different
for how we train doctors, you know, the must be
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quite different all across the world, or I guess
there are probably similarities, but yeah, I,
there's also, I happen to know this because I,
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did pre hospital emergency care, the essentially
the start of ambulance training a while ago.
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And, uh, the thing that was really interested
me was that on the continent, there is
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much more onsite care, uh, if you're
very, very serious, if you're very hurt.
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Uh, whereas the other philosophy is that
you basically scoop and run and you try to
get to the hospital as quickly as possible.
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Like especially for, uh, let's say trauma
patients, you know, there's kind of the big
debate whether or not you kind of patch.
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on site or you kind of pick them up and
get them to the hospital, get them to ED.
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Um, anyway, it's probably,
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Caroline Morton: Stay and play, isn't it?
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Stay and play or run like scoop and run.
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Tim: Yeah, yeah, I don't actually
remember any of the terms anymore.
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I should, um, but at one point, yeah,
I was, I was, uh, an aspirational,
uh, ambulance volunteer, but, um, the
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Uh, however, so I'm, I'm kind of
inherently kind of interested in this,
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But, um, the thing that I'm curious about,
like more from, I guess, the Rust perspective
is why would you pick kind of a crazy,
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difficult programming language to implement
something which could be probably implemented
in something that is much more conventional?
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Mm
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Caroline Morton: Oh, well, it's
gone through various iterations.
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So it actually started initially
with a Python back end.
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Um, and a, what did we, I think
we had a React app to start with.
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So Python back, uh, Python microservices
back end and a, uh, React app.
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Um, which, you know, that was
like the first, first year.
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Um, I wouldn't say we didn't know what we
were doing, but we were, you know, kind of, we
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didn't really realize it was going to become the
business that it has become, if that makes sense.
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I always say that we sort of
accidentally set up a company.
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It was very much a side project.
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Me and Max were really into Python at the
time, um, and, yeah, and so, and then, you
know, two things happened at the same time.
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One, Max, who's the other business partner,
um, he was getting really into Rust.
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He was writing this Rust and web programming.
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I was quite reluctant initially to learn
Rust because I just didn't feel that
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I had a hugely solid grasp on Python
and I was also like, a junior doctor.
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So it was, I was like trying to manage
various different, I was trying to finish my
postgraduate exams and COVID was also happening.
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Um, so it was, it was kind of a busy time,
but essentially we, the sort of final thing
which happened was we went into production.
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We have this chatbot where you have, you
know, up to three patients, per student, and
you might have, say, 120 students in a class.
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What happens at the start of the class
is they all log in at the same time.
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So you've got this five minute window where
the server's getting absolutely smashed.
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And, uh, basically it fell
over in a pretty major way.
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The first time we used it, um,
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Tim: Right, and sort of quote
in anger or what have you.
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Caroline Morton: Well, it just, it just, well,
we sort of initially didn't know what was going.
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It just like the sort of user experience
was, it got really slow, but luckily
we had lots of metrics on the backend.
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We've got this amazing DevOps
engineer, um, who helps us, Harry.
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And, um, so we're able to pinpoint it was
coming from the chatbot and essentially we
just started ripping stuff out of the Python
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backend and turning them into Rust until we
just had the skeleton of the sort of Python.
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It was more like an
orchestration server in the end.
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It just like sent.
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Stuff out to various Rust microservices, and then
we've just switched over to Rust, completely.
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I'm not sure I'll ever write a sort
of big project in Python again.
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Um, I still love it for various things,
you know, like more fancy scripting.
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But, yeah, Rust is yeah, it's amazing.
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So that, that, that's really our origin story.
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It wasn't, you know, the sexiest of
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Tim: No, no, I assumed, like,
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Caroline Morton: sort of just need to move to
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Tim: It is interesting to hear that
essentially you kind of , We're forced to
choose something, you know, like essentially
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the application had reached its limits and
whether or not it was, you know, there'd
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be people screaming at us, um, through the
headphones saying, Oh, it was the suit.
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It was the architecture.
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Da da da da.
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Maybe it was this, it was that, you
know, nothing should fall over with
120 people, da da da da da, whatever.
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Ignore them because in practice, what you
decided to do is say, look, we've hit the limits.
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Now we're essentially forced
to try something else.
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And I think it's really nice to hear that
Rust and, uh, it's community hopefully
was accessible enough to enable you to.
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Kind of get going, even as quote, not a, let's
say expert Python developer or what have you,
because by the way, you've got this entire
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other career that very soon within 24 months,
you're kind of waving goodbye to, at least
that's my perception of what happens next.
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Is that correct?
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Caroline Morton: So just with the, the
120 users, I just, just to go back to
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that, um, we, so we did have a, we, it
was all running on a Kubernetes cluster.
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So we, our initial sort of patching problem
or patch was that we massively scaled.
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The servers.
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So when we knew we were going to have a class,
we just, you know, went up from say like three
nodes to like eight nodes, spun up loads of pods.
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And, uh, I had to learn how to do
that, which was really interesting.
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So like essentially like
really scaling it, which did.
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alleviate a lot of the pain.
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The problem is if you're a tiny
like startup is paying for it.
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Tim: Yeah, it's awful.
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Caroline Morton: yeah, so it was like,
yeah, this, this might solve our problem.
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And we did some stuff where we,
we made the chatbots overnight.
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We like cached them in, in what do we, I think
Redis, can't remember, but we cached them.
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And then we, so we have sort
of various different solutions.
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, but, um, ultimately, it becomes a
financial choice because you are,
you're like, yeah, this would work.
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But equally we're like, we
don't wanna run out of money.
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Tim: And so just these chatbots, they're
presumably, they are doing a lot of work.
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Are they, so is this sort of
large, large language models?
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Are they, do they have personalities?
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Are they.
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Sort of trying to mimic being an
individual with a condition who can't
really describe exactly what's going on.
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They just know that they're having
difficulty breathing or what have you.
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Caroline Morton: Yeah, so that's, um, so what's
been really interesting for us is like how ChatGPT
has sort of forced us to innovate in many ways.
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I had a prototype of the chat bot probably
back in 2018, which was very much a command
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line tool in Python, you could ask a
question and it would give you some response.
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Um, which wasn't very good and that was just
using a Python library, open source library.
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We initially were using that, and, um, it
was, it wasn't like brilliant, I would say.
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Uh, we tried sorts of different ways
of making it better, but the main
thing, people loved the chatbot.
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Um, and this is obviously before ChatGPT.
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We didn't really, we had no idea that was coming,
gonna, But people were like, oh, this is amazing.
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Even if it wasn't very good and they were
very tolerant of the fact it wasn't very good
because they got to speak to this patient.
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Um, then we've moved to, yeah,
we moved to sentence embedding.
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So basically, I was a bit
unhappy with the Python chatbot.
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I took apart the open source
library to find out how it worked.
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Um, and, And what was amazing to me was that
it had ever worked at all, um, once I actually
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got into like the nitty gritty of how it
was, how it actually did, um, like responded.
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So I rewrote it in Rust actually, that
was one of the early things we did.
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I know it sounds a bit insane, but that was like
one of my early Rust projects was rewriting it.
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Um, and then we eventually
went to sentence embeddings.
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Tim: I have a very small, uh, point
to make about, or at least people
often ask the best way to learn Rust.
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And I usually say the best thing to do is to write
something that you have a good understanding of
the domain, like essentially rewrite something
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smallish, not trivial, but I think it's a really
good approach because like it's very health,
because you don't want to be learning a new thing.
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Like I need to write a chat bot.
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Like how do I do that?
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And learn Rust at the same time.
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Like we really, like you were talking
about cognitive overload, kind of need
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to retain a little bit of working memory
in order to continue to move forward.
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Caroline Morton: Yeah, I totally agree with that.
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I think it's so important, uh, to not,
you want to get that sweet spot, where
it's difficult enough that it challenges
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you and is interesting, but it's not so
overwhelming that you just want to give up.
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I think, you know, the major advantage that,
I had, um, well, I had two huge advantages.
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One, I had Max.
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And so, you know, if you've got a buddy,
I'd highly recommend you always have a
buddy who is better than you at whatever
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you're trying to learn, because you
can just ask them, how would I do this?
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Or just watch them code something up.
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And you just get a lot of understanding
about different design patterns and different
approaches to how they break down a problem.
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That was the sort of.
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Huge advantage I had.
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The second advantage though was, which I do not
recommend to other people, is we had customers.
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So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't
like, oh, this is a toy project.
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I've, oh, it's got a bit hard.
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I'll just give up and maybe
start again with a new repo.
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It was like, oh, we've got customers.
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So,
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Tim: And actually they've got needs.
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Caroline Morton: They've got needs and it's 2 a.
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m.
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Um, I've this has got to be written.
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So, um, that's just how it is and that really
accelerated my learning curve, but it was I would
say a slightly painful experience at the time
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Tim: As a doctor, do you have any tips for,
uh, essentially long extended periods of work?
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Uh, this seems to be something that's drilled
into everyone that junior doctors have to work.
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Lots of hours and do lots and lots,
essentially many, many rounds.
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I don't know what the metric is, like what
the unit of time, I suppose it shifts.
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Um, but it does seem to me that, I don't
know if there is any way that there's
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this kind of problem of like grinding
people, like grinding the soul out of them.
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You
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Caroline Morton: Yeah, I think I do agree
I saw I can see it from both sides and I
think you know, when I was like in F1, which
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is like the first year you're a doctor, uh,
Foundation Year One, um, it was just a miserable
experience to be totally honest with you.
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Um,
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Tim: Yeah,
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Caroline Morton: You do is
sleep and work pretty much.
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Um, but then, you know, you, you also need a
system which can output, you know, you know,
it's a production line that people forget this.
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Like you want output thousands of
doctors who are qualified in being GPs
or being cardiologists or surgeons.
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And that production time needs
to be as short as possible.
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for it to be effective and essentially you can't,
you know, if it takes seven years, or say it would
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take five years to be a GP, um, you know, unless
you want that to be 10 years, you have to really,
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Tim: Do the hours, right?
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Caroline Morton: Have to do the hours.
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There is a volume thing, again, where you
just need to see, like, I've seen thousands
of patients and that's just, you know,
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Tim: Yeah.
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I, so there's a couple of things I should
pause there just because there'll be some
people that don't understand the terminology.
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So in the British system, which
I've, I guess I've inherited the big
GP stands for general practitioner.
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So this is essentially a family doctor would, I
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Caroline Morton: that's what I
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Tim: be a term.
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Um, that's quite a difficult specialty.
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As I understand it, is that correct?
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Caroline Morton: Yeah,
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Tim: I don't know if there's any such as a
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Caroline Morton: yeah,
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Tim: Because I,
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Caroline Morton: think so, it's one of those,
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Tim: mean,
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I was going to say, I guess It's all hard,
but I think if you're dealing with people
and we call them primary health organization.
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So if like, if you're in a practice talking
to patients who, you know, everything
is different, there's no continuity.
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You, some of them you have just met for the first
time, others you have dealt with for the last
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several years and they trust you and you've got
to do all of that within a 15 minute consultation.
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Um, strikes me as particularly challenging.
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,
Caroline Morton: It's one of those things where
it's really, if you ask lots of doctors who are
not, who are not GPs, um, this is kind of, I
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mean, hopefully it's got a bit better now, but
it used to be like, oh, they're just a GP, it's
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like, you're not smart enough to do, you know,
one of the proper professions, like anaesthetics
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Tim: yeah, yeah, you're not in a hospital, right?
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You're a community, community practice, right?
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It's like, it's like a serious, serious medicine.
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Um,
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Caroline Morton: but it's
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Tim: could even be worse.
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It could be dentistry.
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Caroline Morton: Yeah.
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Although, you know, you'd be rolling in the cache.
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So, um,
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Tim: That's true.
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Caroline Morton: praise and
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Tim: I don't know, but
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the distinction between, uh, medicine and
dentistry is the weirdest thing, by the way, I
just find that the most bizarre historical quirk.
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,
Caroline Morton: We shared a medical
school with, or we shared a physical
building with the dental school, uh, and.
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You, I think I met, I was there six years, I met
one dentist, like it, they sort of, you, you just
never saw them and they presumably never saw us.
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It was just a very strange sort of, like, I know
they're here somewhere, but who knows where.
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Um, so
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Tim: Yeah, well, um, the other term that I wanted
to just to clarify was junior doctor, because it
sounds like something, it's like, oh, you must
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be 19, but no, no, no, no, no, the term junior
doctor is reserved for someone who's gone all
the way through medical school, gone then through
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specialist training and is then going through
the process of essentially becoming the next
step after that, I think is consultant, correct?
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Or like senior doctor, then consultant or
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Caroline Morton: no.
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So you're
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Tim: so, but
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Caroline Morton: you're a junior doctor from
the day you graduate medical school until
you become either a fully qualified GP.
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or a fully qualified
consultant, which is a bit of an
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Tim: that would be the difference in the hospital.
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Caroline Morton: Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So,
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Tim: Um, yeah.
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Okay.
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So we've got, we've gone through
many arcane details of like,
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so this is actually one of the things I think
I think that I was mostly curious about
when I, um, when I was thinking about this
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interview, which is that you've devoted a
huge amount of your life to the profession.
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And, if this thing that you're building
works, then it could maybe change Outcomes
for patients worldwide, let's say, just, just,
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just steer the needle ever so slightly towards
like, you know, whereas as an individual,
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you're sort of limited to those Just this
quote, small number of thousands of patients.
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Um, I don't know if that was, uh,
was, was, was that the kind of
calculus that you were going through?
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Caroline Morton: Yeah.
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So I would say so it's definitely played into it.
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The simulation program came from something that's
just used to, basically just used to annoy me so
much whenever I did simulation training, because
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you would typically go into a room and there
would be a simulator and you would say, you know,
the, the simulator would say, or the simulator
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patient would say, I've got chest pain, and
then you would say, Oh, I'd order this, an ECG
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and a troponin, which is a blood test, and then
you would be handed those results immediately.
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It's like, this is not realistic.
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In real, like, in real life, my bleep
would be going off, which is like
the little pager, which we still use.
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And, um, all of, you know, and, but you'd also
have like 30 patients and you'd have, you know,
ward rounds to compare, like, and handover.
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And so, really, it very much started
as a pet project of mine because
I was like, this is so annoying.
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It's like, I've got to solve this problem.
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Um, and then, you know, it's slightly gotten a
bit out of hand and now it's my full time job.
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Um, but yeah, the idea is to try and get, um,
People to take this training and then they
can also have some way of standardizing the
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sort of, like, it's not trying to replace like
going into hospitals, talking to patients.
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That's obviously a key part of
training, like still training.
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It should still be an
apprenticeship model in that way.
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But, um, you know, you can't guarantee when you're
doing your, uh, I don't know, neurology block that
you're definitely like in that two week period,
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you're definitely going to see somebody who's got
status or which is an epileptic, you know, you
know, unresponsive basically to typical things.
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Anyway, um, the point is, um, you can't
guarantee that you're going to see a
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patient with that condition in your two
weeks that you'll happen to be there.
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Especially the serious ones, because they should
be stopped or, you know, like stroke, um, patients
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get taken straight into the cath lab now, or they
get straight into like, and have the clot removed.
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That might completely remove the medical
student from, from even seeing that.
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And so, um,
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Tim: right.
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The, so the, so, so what you're
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Caroline Morton: It's like
trying to standardize it.
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Yeah.
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Tim: is through some sort of
the, the apprenticeship model.
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Ideally, we would like to expose
students to as many patients as possible.
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However, there are some of them who are so severe.
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So a very, very sick that they
really need help right now.
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Which actually means that they basically
get, they bypass, these, these critical cases
essentially can't be trained on, which is-
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Caroline Morton: Yeah, they bypass.
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And also you might, they just,
random chance, you know, they just
might not, you know, have turned up.
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I did a week of ENT in my whole
medical, like medical school training.
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I obviously didn't see the vast majority
of ENT conditions, uh, during that time.
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Um, and you could say that
about lots of specialties.
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So I think, you know, you want to be
able to standardize the sort of, you
know, learning opportunities that people
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have had and this is part of what we're
trying to do, if that makes sense.
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Tim: I think so.
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I think that there is a difficulty with
kind of edutech in the sense of it can be.
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Because it's so good at being instrumented,
it can kind of be weaponized against
you in a little bit, at least.
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There's two sides of the coin.
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If I wanted to learn, if I wanted to do extra
work, I'd go on to Khan Academy, for example, and
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I would like learn mathematics and I would kind
of push myself ahead, or I could go via classroom.
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All of these EduTech platforms essentially
provide very specific metrics about
individual performance to educators.
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And I sort of have this personal wince about
the idea that you're actually exposing people
to, uh, I don't know, humiliation, although I
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guess in the space of like medicine, learn very
quickly, presumably that everything is observable.
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Essentially, like all of your decisions are,
that's why you're copiously writing notes
because there are reviews and essentially
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everything that you decide to do, uh, you
know, every diagnostic tool that you asked
for, or, you know, did you ask for too many?
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Were you, uh, all of your clinical
interventions, when were they discharged?
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All of those decisions get checked.
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And maybe, so maybe it's not appropriate.
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I don't know.
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I just have this kind of personal, uh,
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Caroline Morton: point.
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I, uh, so, I mean, one, I, something I
thought a lot about, um, especially because
you don't want to discourage people from,
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um, you know, you don't want to create an
environment in which the the, say, if we,
you know, quote unquote, the poor performers
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are, you know, worried about being punished
in some way, so they stop engaging with it.
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So the separation between the top performers
and the poor performers just increases.
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Uh, that's definitely not what we want.
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So it's something we thought a lot about
the other, um, You know, we work very
closely with the universities in Germany,
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and Germany actually has some quite
interesting sort of data protection laws.
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So one of the caveats was you couldn't
pick up individual people and say, you
365
00:29:01,385 --> 00:29:07,415
know, um, you know, Sharon is doing really,
yeah, is doing really badly at this.
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And so what the teachers get is
a broad summary view of how their
students are performing per disease.
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And so, um, one of the things, so for example,
we, I'm going to talk about cardiology because
that's just recently what we just did, so the,
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like, You might have a cardiology block, and you
know, it's very tempting when you're a teacher,
or even you're a junior doctor, junior doctors
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do a lot of the teaching of medical students,
like, okay, cardiology, the most important thing
to think about is, like, myocardial infarction,
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which is like, you know, you've got a blockage
in your heart, you get a sort of heart attack.
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Um, And,
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Tim: feel like just pausing there and just saying
that myocardial infarction is because so the
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myocardium is a part of a part of the heart,
which, um, and infarction is, yeah, like a, yeah.
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Is it Greek or Latin for stoppage?
375
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I'm not sure.
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Caroline Morton: oh, I don't know.
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It's bad.
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You haven't got enough blood supply going
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Tim: Yeah, that's right.
380
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Yeah.
381
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Essentially like life is
getting, um, very short for you.
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Caroline Morton: and it's painful.
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Um, and so that's, you know, one of the big
kind of ticket items in terms of cardiology.
384
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You always want to make sure that you are,
you know, capturing that and, you're not
385
00:30:22,735 --> 00:30:27,345
missing any, but it's also so typical that
the medical students know it really well.
386
00:30:27,375 --> 00:30:28,365
They know chest pain.
387
00:30:28,365 --> 00:30:30,885
They know it's, that's the
thing you need to look out for.
388
00:30:30,935 --> 00:30:38,895
And what they're less good at is dealing
with, um, and I think genuinely they do
receive less teaching on is things like heart
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failure, which, you know, kills hundreds
of people, thousands of people a year.
390
00:30:42,985 --> 00:30:48,335
Um, some of the arrhythmias, which are
perhaps less common, but maybe do present.
391
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in the emergency rooms in slightly atypical ways.
392
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And so
393
00:30:53,580 --> 00:30:56,490
Tim: Oh, so there's another point that
we should possibly raise for a generalist
394
00:30:56,490 --> 00:31:06,190
audience is that the, this flatlining kind of
cardiogram is, is not what happens in real life.
395
00:31:06,190 --> 00:31:13,140
If someone's, if someone's heart is
distressed, the, the rhythm that the
cardiogram has will look very odd.
396
00:31:13,540 --> 00:31:17,260
Um, and there are different patterns
which require different interventions.
397
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Caroline Morton: Thank you, that's useful.
398
00:31:21,230 --> 00:31:31,540
Um, I, so I, what teachers can do is
that they can then look at, say, I've
included six diseases in this class.
399
00:31:32,230 --> 00:31:38,050
Um, and even though all of the students
have played, they play the role of
the doctor and they've seen different
400
00:31:38,050 --> 00:31:41,610
patients with these different conditions
because they're all unique patients.
401
00:31:42,030 --> 00:31:50,190
They can say, oh, broadly speaking, my
patient, my students are not good at,
um, you know, treating heart failure.
402
00:31:50,700 --> 00:31:54,300
And so I'm going to give some specific
teaching about heart failure because
403
00:31:54,310 --> 00:31:58,000
that's an area that they don't know as
well, or they're not picking up as well.
404
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:05,548
And we often see when we look at these, maybe you
have six diseases within a certain class, we often
see that they're doing really well with myocardial
405
00:32:05,548 --> 00:32:11,078
infarction that we talked about, um, but they're
doing very poorly with things like heart failure.
406
00:32:11,268 --> 00:32:16,838
Or, alternatively, they get the
diagnosis right, um, of the, you know,
407
00:32:17,523 --> 00:32:20,663
terrible chest pain that you're having,
but they don't give any pain relief.
408
00:32:20,913 --> 00:32:22,543
That's a very common thing that we see.
409
00:32:22,813 --> 00:32:24,183
And that's very true to life.
410
00:32:24,213 --> 00:32:31,773
You do see that in, you know, you get people
in the emergency room who, you know, they
get the right diagnosis, but they don't
411
00:32:32,053 --> 00:32:37,953
then end up having any pain relief, which
is the thing that they care about, is, you
know, to get rid of this terrible pain.
412
00:32:38,363 --> 00:32:42,183
Um, and so we are picking up those things.
413
00:32:42,253 --> 00:32:44,088
Uh, we are picking up those things and.
414
00:32:44,088 --> 00:32:52,128
The fact that it does reflect like what
I've seen in real life and what other
people have seen is, is reassuring.
415
00:32:52,438 --> 00:32:59,738
Um, so yeah, so, but back to the
question, which was, you know, are
we picking out individual students?
416
00:32:59,738 --> 00:33:08,258
We're not, uh, they can see their own
performance, but teachers can't see anything
other than the sort of metric at a class level.
417
00:33:10,413 --> 00:33:14,143
Tim: Ostensibly, this is a Rust
discussion, but this is fascinating to me.
418
00:33:14,143 --> 00:33:18,633
So I have one other thing about planning this.
419
00:33:18,813 --> 00:33:28,513
Do you ever have a very, like, I don't know
what the, uh, I always try, I always get
stuck on the pronunciation of this word.
420
00:33:28,563 --> 00:33:31,813
Is it pedagogy, pedagogy?
421
00:33:32,163 --> 00:33:37,953
Caroline Morton: Oh yeah, yeah, it's not,
we don't really use it as commonly in the
UK to be honest, but other people use it.
422
00:33:38,173 --> 00:33:40,273
Tim: Okay, um, right.
423
00:33:40,273 --> 00:33:47,213
So if from like an instructional design
point of view, if you were to just
424
00:33:47,243 --> 00:33:53,793
give a boring day in the simulation,
like, is that something that's of like.
425
00:33:54,353 --> 00:33:54,963
Worth?
426
00:33:55,063 --> 00:34:01,063
Do you ever just kind of not have really
tricky, odd kind of test cases in there?
427
00:34:01,313 --> 00:34:03,623
Or is that kind of silly?
428
00:34:04,273 --> 00:34:05,793
Caroline Morton: No, I think
it's a really good idea.
429
00:34:05,803 --> 00:34:12,983
I think, so we don't necessarily have
boring patients in the sense they all
do have something wrong with them.
430
00:34:13,473 --> 00:34:15,183
Um, I have
431
00:34:15,253 --> 00:34:21,563
Tim: You don't have someone coming in
and asking, essentially that, actually
paracetamol or what have you is fine.
432
00:34:21,838 --> 00:34:22,308
Go home.
433
00:34:23,113 --> 00:34:24,733
Caroline Morton: we do have a couple of patients.
434
00:34:25,913 --> 00:34:27,943
like, um, scenarios or you're not patient.
435
00:34:27,943 --> 00:34:38,463
So diseases where, um, essentially the
treatment is like go home and rest and take
ibuprofen, um, things like musculoskeletal pain.
436
00:34:38,923 --> 00:34:43,043
Um, and we do have like a, you know, cold.
437
00:34:45,088 --> 00:34:45,938
Um,
438
00:34:46,118 --> 00:34:47,938
Tim: do turn up to the ED with cold.
439
00:34:48,358 --> 00:34:53,328
Caroline Morton: Oh yeah, I mean, I used to, I
mean, I, when I was working in general practices,
440
00:34:53,328 --> 00:35:00,168
I used to get a cold literally every two weeks
because I saw so many sick kids for, for winter.
441
00:35:01,038 --> 00:35:05,648
Um, so yeah, it was, yes, I, I
don't miss that aspect of it.
442
00:35:06,238 --> 00:35:08,903
Um, But yeah, we do have them.
443
00:35:08,913 --> 00:35:14,103
We don't do purposely boring, uh, shifts, but
444
00:35:14,418 --> 00:35:16,888
Tim: No, no, no, it was just,
I, more, more out of curiosity.
445
00:35:16,888 --> 00:35:17,148
I don't
446
00:35:17,413 --> 00:35:25,503
Caroline Morton: I think it's a good point,
and we do have, um, we, I would say the vast
majority of the, the diseases, they do present
447
00:35:25,523 --> 00:35:34,278
in the sort of classic boring way, you know,
the chest pain patient, uh, and then there's
sprinkled in, there are a few, you know, um,
448
00:35:34,918 --> 00:35:42,328
You know, and more unusual presentations of the
same condition and so there is you have to make
sure that you're still looking out for those
449
00:35:43,748 --> 00:35:49,058
Those you whatever it is that's presenting as
something slightly unusual, which which happens
450
00:35:49,678 --> 00:35:56,918
Tim: Do patients ever get transferred
to the doctor in a way that
either misses or misrepresents?
451
00:35:58,398 --> 00:35:59,968
So it's essentially the handover.
452
00:35:59,988 --> 00:36:04,208
Um, and they have to go through the process.
453
00:36:05,138 --> 00:36:10,778
Caroline Morton: we don't have that but
we are just gonna have handover happening.
454
00:36:11,218 --> 00:36:17,548
Uh, from, you can arrive in the emergency
room via the ambulance or via just walk in.
455
00:36:17,948 --> 00:36:23,148
And so there's, um, in the new version,
hopefully which will be out in Autumn
456
00:36:23,148 --> 00:36:29,268
time, there will be a, uh, capacity to
have like a triage nurse give a hand over.
457
00:36:29,928 --> 00:36:36,418
And an ambulance, crew give a handover and I
think I might add some variation into that.
458
00:36:36,418 --> 00:36:40,378
So sometimes they're just missing, um,
you know, maybe not from the ambulance
459
00:36:40,378 --> 00:36:43,568
crew, but certainly from, you know, maybe
the, the nurse hasn't got to them yet.
460
00:36:44,008 --> 00:36:46,778
Um, and so there is no sort of handover.
461
00:36:47,228 --> 00:36:48,348
Um, so yeah, there's, there's
462
00:36:48,448 --> 00:36:48,708
Tim: Right.
463
00:36:48,748 --> 00:36:50,628
So you arrive before the handover does.
464
00:36:50,638 --> 00:36:53,728
And so the patient's waiting
there to be, and you, okay.
465
00:36:53,728 --> 00:36:55,278
Yeah.
466
00:36:55,348 --> 00:37:00,058
Caroline Morton: to decide from the, it's sort
of the, you've got to decide who you take first.
467
00:37:00,178 --> 00:37:01,788
So everyone starts in the waiting room.
468
00:37:02,548 --> 00:37:09,928
So you've got to make your decisions about
who you take first, and that can also cause
problems, because you might be very tempted
469
00:37:09,928 --> 00:37:17,488
to take the older person, who seems like, you
know, they're really sick, because they're,
I don't know, they've got chest pain, it
470
00:37:17,488 --> 00:37:21,328
turns out they've just pulled a muscle,
wear it, and you've missed the 44 year old.
471
00:37:22,038 --> 00:37:25,278
who's got, who's actually having
a serious medical complaint.
472
00:37:25,688 --> 00:37:26,068
Yeah.
473
00:37:26,068 --> 00:37:31,918
So, um, there are, yeah, there's sort of, you make
decisions about, you know, who you should take
474
00:37:32,918 --> 00:37:33,958
Tim: I am laughing to myself.
475
00:37:34,443 --> 00:37:38,593
Yeah, no, I was going to say, well,
do you have staff walkouts and how
much of other kind of complaints?
476
00:37:38,913 --> 00:37:41,693
Like what if someone forgets to put the T on?
477
00:37:42,093 --> 00:37:42,643
Um,
478
00:37:42,888 --> 00:37:43,328
Caroline Morton: yeah.
479
00:37:43,328 --> 00:37:50,638
I mean, the only sort of distraction we have
at the moment is the bleep, which is the
bane of my life when I was a junior doctor.
480
00:37:51,418 --> 00:38:00,488
Um, I mean, I, it was, I had such
a, I think it's a response to it
that any time I heard a beep noise
481
00:38:00,683 --> 00:38:02,133
Tim: beep, beep, beep, beep.
482
00:38:02,258 --> 00:38:07,838
Caroline Morton: years, I used to look down at my
right hip where my pager was or wasn't and, um,
483
00:38:07,878 --> 00:38:12,578
and look for the bleep, even though I was on the
tube or somewhere, it was just someone's phone.
484
00:38:12,608 --> 00:38:15,538
Um, so yeah, that was a big distraction.
485
00:38:15,858 --> 00:38:19,868
Um, but yeah, we, we have capacity
to add in more distractions.
486
00:38:20,223 --> 00:38:28,453
Tim: Yeah, I'm sure they're just like,
uh, it will be hard to try to make sure
to kind of stop building new stuff.
487
00:38:28,483 --> 00:38:30,793
Cause you could always add more complexity.
488
00:38:31,243 --> 00:38:32,823
Um, and
489
00:38:33,038 --> 00:38:39,178
Caroline Morton: learning point for me is
it's very tempting to add more and more
features, but feature creep really is a.
490
00:38:39,578 --> 00:38:40,818
Is a really big problem.
491
00:38:40,838 --> 00:38:50,088
And so, um, it's really important to just
make sure that you are just making sure that
the things first are things which people
492
00:38:50,128 --> 00:38:56,468
actually want and, uh, that you have been
paid to do or someone is willing to pay for.
493
00:38:56,768 --> 00:38:58,098
Um, and.
494
00:38:59,023 --> 00:39:06,033
Yeah, so that's, that's a, it's definitely
a learning experience running a company and
having to start thinking about these things.
495
00:39:07,063 --> 00:39:17,393
Tim: So, how do you describe yourself to,
let's say a friend of a friend you, uh,
like how, how do you introduce yourself?
496
00:39:18,523 --> 00:39:21,193
Caroline Morton: Oh, that is
a, that's a difficult question.
497
00:39:22,643 --> 00:39:24,453
Tim: I know it's, it's awful.
498
00:39:25,253 --> 00:39:25,633
Sorry.
499
00:39:25,643 --> 00:39:27,313
It is, it is a challenging one.
500
00:39:27,483 --> 00:39:32,523
Caroline Morton: so I've, I've adopted the, I've
adopted the handle of like, uh, I'm just going
501
00:39:32,523 --> 00:39:37,553
to call myself a software engineer now, which
feels kind of still slightly uncomfortable.
502
00:39:37,883 --> 00:39:40,513
Um, but I think.
503
00:39:40,953 --> 00:39:44,773
You know, I've been writing, I've been
writing software for like three and a half
504
00:39:44,773 --> 00:39:50,623
years full time and You know because I wasn't
even before I went to the company full time.
505
00:39:50,623 --> 00:39:58,813
I was writing software and not working as
a doctor and so it's yeah, that's that's
506
00:39:58,813 --> 00:40:03,833
what I've decided to go for and that might
annoy people but that's what I'm going for
507
00:40:05,033 --> 00:40:06,113
Tim: Who would it annoy?
508
00:40:08,063 --> 00:40:10,773
Caroline Morton: Yeah, I think It's difficult.
509
00:40:10,823 --> 00:40:11,063
Tim: Sure.
510
00:40:11,423 --> 00:40:14,903
So, so, uh, may I, oh,
let's, let's ask that again.
511
00:40:15,133 --> 00:40:17,493
So if I could probe slightly.
512
00:40:17,563 --> 00:40:26,973
I'm curious as to, are you saying
that you haven't earned your place to
call yourself a software developer?
513
00:40:27,023 --> 00:40:28,143
Is that what you're saying?
514
00:40:28,593 --> 00:40:37,023
Caroline Morton: I sometimes feel that, um,
because I haven't done sort of the equivalent
of junior doctor, doctoring in software.
515
00:40:37,573 --> 00:40:43,363
,
Tim: it helps, I don't know if this does, people
fly me around the world to listen to me speak.
516
00:40:44,643 --> 00:40:44,793
Caroline Morton: that
517
00:40:44,903 --> 00:40:45,293
Tim: I have
518
00:40:45,553 --> 00:40:46,723
Caroline Morton: great gig if I can get it.
519
00:40:46,723 --> 00:40:48,443
So that
520
00:40:49,203 --> 00:40:53,163
Tim: I will look, if I can figure out
a way to afford to bring you back to.
521
00:40:54,213 --> 00:41:05,203
a country with very, uh, if I can afford
to bring you to, to, to New Zealand next
August, I'll try the, um, but I also have not.
522
00:41:06,013 --> 00:41:11,303
So one of the things that software
engineering, or even the term software
engineering is difficult, right?
523
00:41:11,593 --> 00:41:16,893
That the software industry does
not have centuries of practice.
524
00:41:16,893 --> 00:41:18,113
It doesn't know what it is.
525
00:41:18,973 --> 00:41:22,623
It means to be in the profession.
526
00:41:22,673 --> 00:41:23,933
It isn't a profession.
527
00:41:24,113 --> 00:41:25,023
Is it a vocation?
528
00:41:25,023 --> 00:41:26,243
It's really hard to know.
529
00:41:26,773 --> 00:41:36,833
It's primarily filled with people who are,
most people describe themselves as self taught.
530
00:41:37,193 --> 00:41:42,103
There are very few people that start at
university and go through a tradition,
let's say a conventional education.
531
00:41:42,768 --> 00:41:44,058
Or educational pathway.
532
00:41:44,818 --> 00:41:50,268
There's a lot of frustration that
people need to bulldoze through, I
think, when you're learning to code.
533
00:41:50,488 --> 00:41:58,123
You're continuously fighting syntax and then
semantics and you're always trying to use it.
534
00:42:00,213 --> 00:42:03,253
slightly away from what you want.
535
00:42:03,253 --> 00:42:09,043
You've got this conceptual idea about
what you want to construct, want to build,
but you're actually, you don't have the
536
00:42:09,073 --> 00:42:12,923
cognitive, you don't have the intellectual
ability to actually implement it.
537
00:42:12,983 --> 00:42:14,823
And that's extremely frustrating.
538
00:42:15,903 --> 00:42:16,383
So if it's,
539
00:42:16,828 --> 00:42:24,238
Caroline Morton: even when it works though,
and you've implemented the thing, I often find
myself thinking, you know, Is this the right way?
540
00:42:24,628 --> 00:42:27,378
Like, have I, should I have
used a different design pattern?
541
00:42:27,378 --> 00:42:32,688
So I'm a bit obsessive about reading
like software engineering books,
like trying to upskill in that area.
542
00:42:32,688 --> 00:42:41,438
I'm now going, I mean, ChatGPT is actually
a great resource for, you know, asking
questions like, what, what is this thing?
543
00:42:41,518 --> 00:42:42,398
Um, you
544
00:42:42,473 --> 00:42:43,533
Tim: yeah, no, I agree.
545
00:42:43,803 --> 00:42:45,063
I actually,
546
00:42:45,298 --> 00:42:45,618
Caroline Morton: Yeah.
547
00:42:46,983 --> 00:42:56,278
Tim: I think it's very nice from the,
Although I've kind of defected slightly to
Claude, um, which is, and the other one, um,
548
00:42:56,278 --> 00:43:02,088
although there are several other ones, but
yeah, I, I think that these AI assistants
549
00:43:02,088 --> 00:43:08,248
are quite nice for being able to give you
like a condensed Wikipedia page of a topic.
550
00:43:08,648 --> 00:43:17,328
Um, and I ask it silly questions, like, um, and I
think that one of the nice things about software.
551
00:43:17,728 --> 00:43:21,538
Oh, so, so actually, no, I
don't want to, I want to.
552
00:43:22,333 --> 00:43:37,838
Try to figure out If there's anything more that
software can do, do better at allowing people
who are changing careers to feel welcome?
553
00:43:38,098 --> 00:43:39,428
Um, is that.
554
00:43:39,768 --> 00:43:44,858
Caroline Morton: So I actually think
the software engineer, the software
engineering community does this very well.
555
00:43:45,268 --> 00:43:51,968
Um, because, and, you know, the fact there's
so many, you know, all you need is a computer
and an Internet connection and, you know, a
556
00:43:51,968 --> 00:43:56,088
bit of willpower and you can probably teach
yourself, you know, and that's what we did.
557
00:43:56,088 --> 00:44:05,253
Like we've all pretty much, well, not all of us,
obviously, uh, but, you know, Most of us have self
taught, used books, used videos, whatever it is.
558
00:44:05,553 --> 00:44:11,403
Um, and so you can get into, I think
you can get into this profession.
559
00:44:12,443 --> 00:44:16,233
And I wouldn't say, I don't, I mean, there's
obviously some parts of the community which are
560
00:44:16,233 --> 00:44:24,623
a bit unfriendly, but, um, I think it's also,
you know, we also have to look within ourselves.
561
00:44:24,803 --> 00:44:27,863
You know, I, no one said to me, oh,
you're not a proper software engineer.
562
00:44:29,003 --> 00:44:31,143
I'm, I feel that sometimes.
563
00:44:31,183 --> 00:44:35,453
And so, and I think if you speak to lots
of people, that's what they often will say.
564
00:44:35,913 --> 00:44:41,138
Um, And, you know, especially junior people,
they might say, Oh, you know, I've just write a
565
00:44:41,138 --> 00:44:48,328
few lines of, of code, you know, or they'll have
some way of couching it without using that label.
566
00:44:48,838 --> 00:44:52,678
Uh, so I decided three years ago, I was
about, I was just going to start using it.
567
00:44:52,778 --> 00:44:56,638
And it felt really uncomfortable to start with,
but now nobody's sort of really questions it.
568
00:44:57,198 --> 00:45:02,903
Uh, but it is, Yeah, it's something to
have a think about, but it, you know, it's
your own, it can be your own insecurities.
569
00:45:02,903 --> 00:45:05,893
It's not necessarily a problem, I would say,
with the community, because actually I think the
570
00:45:05,893 --> 00:45:12,033
community is way more accepting of you being self
taught than, I can't think of another profession.
571
00:45:12,648 --> 00:45:17,148
where they'd be like, you know, they're
not exactly going to be like, I'm a
self, I'm self taught civil engineer.
572
00:45:17,408 --> 00:45:24,438
They'd be like, you're not building a bridge,
like get out of here, like, or I'm a self taught
doctor, like there's not going to be that.
573
00:45:24,618 --> 00:45:28,598
So I think, yeah, I think that's
a really positive aspect of it.
574
00:45:29,248 --> 00:45:30,218
You can change career.
575
00:45:30,288 --> 00:45:34,368
It's so interesting how many people, how
they've got into software engineering.
576
00:45:36,278 --> 00:45:37,098
Tim: Yeah, I agree.
577
00:45:38,038 --> 00:45:43,538
I actually expected you to say something
slightly different, if I were to look at what
578
00:45:43,538 --> 00:45:51,838
you're building, I would describe you as an
entrepreneur who is using software, essentially.
579
00:45:51,848 --> 00:45:59,618
Like I'm surprised that your personal emphasis is
on the code rather than the company, let's say.
580
00:45:59,988 --> 00:46:06,598
Um, however, it's fascinating to me
that that's how, that's kind of the
mantle that you've chosen to wear.
581
00:46:08,198 --> 00:46:10,228
Caroline Morton: Yeah, it's the
one which feels most comfortable.
582
00:46:10,518 --> 00:46:16,618
I just can't ever imagine or describe,
I just, I just cannot imagine ever
describing myself as an entrepreneur.
583
00:46:17,428 --> 00:46:18,918
That seems, I just cannot.
584
00:46:20,188 --> 00:46:27,638
Um, but, but yeah, it's, uh, I,
I, yeah, I'm enjoying wearing the
software engineer mantle for now.
585
00:46:27,638 --> 00:46:28,508
So, or
586
00:46:28,903 --> 00:46:29,533
Tim: Yeah, superb.
587
00:46:30,353 --> 00:46:37,533
No, it's absolutely, again, I, I don't know
whether anyone will do, does one wear a mantle?
588
00:46:37,533 --> 00:46:38,783
I'm presuming, I presumably
589
00:46:38,928 --> 00:46:39,328
Caroline Morton: I don't know.
590
00:46:39,328 --> 00:46:40,738
It's why I changed it to label.
591
00:46:40,738 --> 00:46:43,118
I was like, do you wear a I'm not sure actually.
592
00:46:43,118 --> 00:46:44,388
So, um,
593
00:46:44,503 --> 00:46:45,373
, Tim: but, um,
594
00:46:45,488 --> 00:46:46,658
Caroline Morton: comments correcting us.
595
00:46:46,658 --> 00:46:47,483
So,
596
00:46:47,608 --> 00:46:47,838
Tim: Yeah.
597
00:46:47,838 --> 00:46:49,598
I, I, I, I'm looking forward to it.
598
00:46:50,453 --> 00:46:53,383
I heard you are involved with Women in Rust.
599
00:46:54,978 --> 00:46:56,328
What is Women in Rust?
600
00:46:56,648 --> 00:47:05,618
Caroline Morton: So Women in Rust is a community
group that I set up with a, uh, another person
called Lizzie Holmes, who is head of operations
601
00:47:05,638 --> 00:47:12,418
at SurrealDB, which is a database company that's
built in Rust, multi modal database company.
602
00:47:12,758 --> 00:47:18,198
Um, and so basically we've set
up, um, this Women in Rust group.
603
00:47:18,508 --> 00:47:22,278
It's currently a meetup group, and
we just started in, I think, April.
604
00:47:22,568 --> 00:47:23,798
We had our first meeting.
605
00:47:24,518 --> 00:47:25,108
meetup.
606
00:47:25,308 --> 00:47:28,748
Um, and we've already got 190 members.
607
00:47:29,608 --> 00:47:32,848
Um, and so that's been really positive.
608
00:47:32,888 --> 00:47:35,998
We've had some education, uh, lectures.
609
00:47:35,998 --> 00:47:41,728
The first two were me and then we've
now, I'm delighted to say, we've
got external people now coming in.
610
00:47:42,038 --> 00:47:48,143
These amazing female role models who
can come and talk about how they're
using Rust to build their business.
611
00:47:48,183 --> 00:47:52,503
And we've, you know, we've had people who Rust
is their first programming language and then
612
00:47:52,503 --> 00:47:56,683
people who are super experienced in other and
they've come from sort of different backgrounds.
613
00:47:57,093 --> 00:48:02,553
Um, so yeah, if you are interested in Women
in Rust, you can join the meetup group and
614
00:48:02,553 --> 00:48:08,343
there probably will be Slack or some other
form of electronic communication coming soon.
615
00:48:08,393 --> 00:48:09,843
Uh, once I figure that all out.
616
00:48:10,063 --> 00:48:10,693
Um,
617
00:48:10,978 --> 00:48:15,588
Tim: Is it specific to London or at
least the southeast of England or?
618
00:48:15,683 --> 00:48:21,333
Caroline Morton: so it's an online,
so we always run, um, yeah, we always
run online versions of the event.
619
00:48:21,343 --> 00:48:26,653
So actually we've only had one in person
meet up, everything else has been online.
620
00:48:26,723 --> 00:48:37,123
And so we run this monthly lunch at, uh, what's
it called, Learn at Lunch, and, um, that's, you
know, an hour over the lunch break every week,
621
00:48:37,393 --> 00:48:42,603
and not every week, every month, um, and that's
been really fun, really friendly community.
622
00:48:42,993 --> 00:48:49,683
Um, and that's recorded and is
put on YouTube and sort of various
different places for people to watch.
623
00:48:50,148 --> 00:48:51,508
later if they want to.
624
00:48:51,928 --> 00:48:59,018
Um, and then we also have just started like a
community kind of catch up, um, as well, that's
new for us just to sort of try and encourage
625
00:48:59,018 --> 00:49:02,778
people to introduce themselves, talk about
who they are, why they're interested in Rust.
626
00:49:03,488 --> 00:49:10,918
Um, and we're going to be running some
workshops in September on APIs and
hopefully some other stuff next year.
627
00:49:11,298 --> 00:49:16,268
So yeah, very grateful for Surreal Database
Company, a DB, Surreal DB for sort of
628
00:49:16,288 --> 00:49:21,648
being, providing such a lot of, um,
support to us and, and Lizzie's amazing.
629
00:49:21,648 --> 00:49:23,098
So you should definitely talk to Lizzie one day.
630
00:49:23,098 --> 00:49:24,968
She's a real advocate in the space.
631
00:49:26,068 --> 00:49:26,618
Tim: I shall.
632
00:49:26,648 --> 00:49:28,318
Well, at least I'll go and nag her
633
00:49:28,668 --> 00:49:30,758
.
I have a question
634
00:49:31,788 --> 00:49:33,108
Are you doing a PhD?
635
00:49:33,708 --> 00:49:37,538
Caroline Morton: I am doing a PhD, a very
part time PhD, but don't tell my supervisors.
636
00:49:38,058 --> 00:49:46,268
Um, so I'm doing a PhD in, we haven't
talked about this, um, but I've also had
a bit of a career as an epidemiologist.
637
00:49:46,308 --> 00:49:48,528
I actually did it before I trained as a GP.
638
00:49:48,528 --> 00:49:49,188
I was, did.
639
00:49:49,428 --> 00:49:50,258
epidemiology.
640
00:49:50,738 --> 00:50:04,848
And so I, yeah, I've been involved with it
for sort of 10 plus years, um, or 10 Um, and
eventually I've taken the, um, sort of bit in
641
00:50:04,848 --> 00:50:13,388
the bullet, I suppose is the phrase, and, um,
doing a PhD, um, at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine in medical statistics.
642
00:50:13,848 --> 00:50:18,088
Um, and my PhD is on creating synthetic data.
643
00:50:18,088 --> 00:50:25,348
Um, for realistic synthetic data for
electronic health record research, which
is pretty niche, but really important.
644
00:50:26,608 --> 00:50:32,108
Tim: No, I, I want to kind of scream
because this is sort of slightly incredible.
645
00:50:32,108 --> 00:50:34,648
I've, I'm, it's unfortunate
that we're right at the end.
646
00:50:34,688 --> 00:50:39,408
I, um, I want to talk to you
about record linkage actually.
647
00:50:39,668 --> 00:50:45,538
Caroline Morton: Okay, it's something
I've thought a lot about and I've
been very frustrated with in the past.
648
00:50:47,588 --> 00:50:50,778
And I think it's easiest in
the UK, actually, of anywhere.
649
00:50:50,838 --> 00:50:54,458
Um, you know, I think we've got a
very good setup for linking records.
650
00:50:54,498 --> 00:50:56,668
Maybe not the easiest, but it's sort of up there.
651
00:50:56,938 --> 00:50:59,658
And even then it can be a frustrating experience.
652
00:51:00,078 --> 00:51:00,098
So
653
00:51:00,223 --> 00:51:01,483
Tim: I bet, I bet, I bet.
654
00:51:01,483 --> 00:51:05,943
Well, I shall let you go and have a really,
uh, and please do have a pleasant day.
655
00:51:06,303 --> 00:51:09,713
Um, how has summer been, by the way?
656
00:51:10,023 --> 00:51:12,343
Has it been heatwaves and disgusting heat?
657
00:51:12,423 --> 00:51:12,943
Or,
658
00:51:13,218 --> 00:51:14,908
Caroline Morton: it's been distinctly not that.
659
00:51:14,908 --> 00:51:15,848
It's been a lot of rain.
660
00:51:16,058 --> 00:51:18,528
Um, but it's.
661
00:51:18,923 --> 00:51:23,883
Yeah, I mean, we've had a few days of
sun, so it's been, been nice to have that.
662
00:51:24,493 --> 00:51:28,443
Unfortunately, I managed to get COVID during
the time I was meant to go on my summer holiday.
663
00:51:28,453 --> 00:51:31,203
So I did not get to go to Portugal, but nevermind.
664
00:51:31,243 --> 00:51:34,393
Um, we have had a few sunny days since then.
665
00:51:34,393 --> 00:51:34,513
So,
666
00:51:36,643 --> 00:51:36,913
Tim: okay.
667
00:51:36,933 --> 00:51:38,833
Hey, well, it's been a very sincere pleasure.
668
00:51:39,243 --> 00:51:40,353
And, uh, thank you so
669
00:51:40,473 --> 00:51:41,273
Caroline Morton: thanks for having me.
670
00:51:42,093 --> 00:51:42,343
Tim: Cheers.
671
00:51:42,943 --> 00:51:45,003
Um, I shall push stop.