With some post-exam free time, I want to start adding to what will hopefully become a repository of useful medical resources. In that effort, after an exam-specific opener, I thought I should add a practical tool.
So I went and made one:
Paediatric Anaesthesia Calculator
I have no computer science background and do not know how to navigate code. But, with sufficient persistence and fixed interests, along with using some legitimately miraculous Large Language Models (LLMs), a non-technical individual can just…make stuff.
So, as an experiment, I tried to make a calculator that would give me estimated drug doses and equipment sizes in children based on their age (or date of birth) or weight or height.
I used Bolt to generate a code base from plain text prompts of what I wanted:
Which I then uploaded into a GitHub repository:
Which then automatically deploys to Netlify so the ‘app’ can be rendered as a webpage:
Realistically, the bulk of the ‘making’ took about an hour. Then I pottered for a few more hours to get it looking right and deploying to a web page properly. Which basically looked like me asking my new AI overlord what the next step should be. Repeatedly.
And so as I write this, that calculator you can find by clicking the link is not quite finished and I aim to keep updating the medications and formulas to improve what is essentially just a tool that I thought would be useful for myself.
Next steps could include formally making the calculator into an ’App Store-approved’ app, or I might just leave it as a webpage that I keep saved to my home screen as a reference tool for when I need to give drugs to a small human.
Dunno.
The point, dear reader, is that there are a staggering array of tools becoming available to us non-technical luddites that can allow you to just make stuff that you find interesting.
I recommend having a play.
Remember, however, to say ‘please’ and a ‘thank you’ when chatting with your chosen LLM so that you may be spared when the machines become sentient…
Otherwise I hope to use this site to explore and stockpile lots of resources and products that may be useful to those in the medical profession. If you have any suggestions for resources that I should include, please head over to the ‘Additions’ page:
Luke Reynolds
