Clinically Intelligent is written by Juwon Akinyande in a personal capacity and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of Barts Health NHS Trust or any other NHS organisation. Content is for general educational purposes only. It does not constitute clinical, legal, or information governance advice. Before applying any guidance to your own practice, consult your Trust information governance lead, your Caldicott Guardian, your line manager, and your professional body.
When I first opened Gemini I treated it like every other AI tool. Open the tab. Ask a question. Read the answer. Close the tab.
That is the least interesting thing Gemini does.
The chat is fine. It is comparable to Claude and ChatGPT on most tasks. If that is all you used it for you would probably conclude there is not much reason to add another tool to your week. I would have agreed with you until recently.
The reason to look at Gemini is not what it does on its own. It is what it connects to. Gemini is the front door to a Google ecosystem most clinicians already have and barely use. Drive sitting cold with documents you forgot you saved. NotebookLM you tried once and never returned to. Calendar managing your week without any real context. Docs holding writing you never went back to.
The integration is the value. The chat is just where you start.
What Gemini is.
Gemini is Google's AI model. Free tier is enough for most use. UK accessible. You sign in with the same Google account you already use for everything else. To access Gemini go to https://gemini.google.com.
I have been using it for a while but only recently started thinking about it differently. Since Issue 08 I have been thinking more about the work around clinical work. CPD. Organisation. The things that are important but always get pushed to the end of the day when there is nothing left. That shift in thinking is what made me look at Gemini differently. Not as another chat tool. As infrastructure for everything clinical work produces that never gets properly managed.
I use it on laptop. The interface is cleaner now and easier to move around. Similar layout to the other models but it just feels more connected to the things I actually need it to reach. I have been using Flash 3.5 which handles everything in this issue comfortably.
The ecosystem.
[Connected Apps screen showing Google Workspace integration with Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Keep and Tasks - Found under “Settings” then “Connected Apps”]
A short tour. Each piece deserves its own issue. This is the landscape not the deep dive.
Google Drive — your personal cloud storage. Documents, PDFs, reading material, professional work. Gemini can read across files in your Drive when you point it at them. Cold storage becomes something you can actually interrogate.
NotebookLM — we covered this in Issue 02 for team knowledge bases. A future issue will return to it for personal knowledge management. For now the point is that it sits inside the same ecosystem Gemini opens up.
Google Docs — Gemini built into Docs lets you draft, refine, and summarise without leaving the document. Useful for reflective accounts, CPD logs, service development writing, professional applications.
Gmail — Gemini can draft replies, summarise threads, and pull context from previous emails. Useful for the professional correspondence that piles up around clinical work.
Calendar — Gemini can summarise your week, flag conflicts, and help you plan around your schedule.
Five pieces. One account. One ecosystem.
Why this matters for clinicians.
Most NHS clinical work happens inside Microsoft systems your Trust controls. Gemini does not touch any of that. What it does reach is the other half of a clinician's professional life — the work that happens outside. CPD. Reflective practice. Professional communication. Personal knowledge management. Service development. Career planning. The things that matter and never get enough time.
That is most of the time pressure clinicians actually feel. The clinical work gets done. The infrastructure of being a clinician is what falls away because there is nothing left by the end of a clinical day to do it properly.
What happened when I tested it.
I opened Gemini to test something. Could it help me start a CPD reflection from documents I had worked on recently. I picked two documents from my Drive. The Clinician's AI Safety Check and the cognitive rehabilitation plan I had produced for Issue 04. I asked Gemini to find learning moments, ask me reflective questions, and surface any tensions in the material.
[Prompt visible in the chat window with the file picker open showing Upload Files and Add from Drive options]
What came back was three sections. The first two were what I expected. Specific quotes accurately pulled from the documents. Reflective questions that were genuinely targeted to the actual material rather than generic CPD prompts. Useful. I would have written my reflection from them.
[Section 02 showing targeted reflective questions]
The third section was the one that stopped me.
Gemini had identified a real inconsistency between Check 7 and Check 8 of my own Safety Check. Check 7 says output for one specific patient you have assessed sits within normal clinical practice. Check 8 says output intended for multiple patients or wider distribution needs a completely different governance review. The cognitive rehabilitation plan template sits between the two. It is a reusable asset designed to be personalised for individuals. Technically it could fall under either check depending on how you read it.
I had built that framework. I had published it. I had not thought that specific tension through.
That is the thing about building something and then sitting inside it. You stop seeing the gaps. I needed something outside of my own thinking to reflect it back. Gemini did that without being asked to.
[Section 03 showing Gaps, Inconsistencies, Tensions with The Personalisation vs Governance Tension heading]
I sat down to do a CPD reflection. I ended up doing a work review. And I left with something specific I need to go back and address in a future issue.
That is what this tool can do that a standard search cannot. It does not just find information. It reads what you have produced and tells you something about it you did not know you needed to hear.
Where to start this week.
The best way into this is not to try to build a CPD folder overnight. Start with a few things you have been meaning to get through. Notes from a presentation. A document you produced and meant to revisit. An article a colleague sent you that you saved but never properly read.
If those documents are not already in Drive this is the ten minutes of work everything else depends on. Upload them. Put them in one folder. Then open Gemini. Use the Drive picker to attach the documents. Paste the prompt below. Read what comes back.
The questions Gemini asks you are the test. If they sound generic the documents were not substantial enough. If they sound like questions a thoughtful supervisor would ask after reading your work you have just seen what this tool actually does.
Ten minutes. Three documents. One prompt.
Limitations worth knowing.
The chat on its own is not noticeably better than Claude or ChatGPT for most tasks. If you have a tool you are happy with the chat alone is not a reason to switch.
The integration only works if you actually use Google for the work in question. If your CPD lives in OneDrive and your professional emails come through your NHS account Gemini does not help with any of that. This ecosystem serves the work around clinical work not the clinical work itself.
The Drive interrogation is only as good as what is in your Drive. The system rewards clinicians who have built some discipline about where their professional material lives. If everything is scattered across laptops, phones, and email attachments Gemini cannot pull it together.
Google Workspace has its own data handling policies. Worth reading them before putting professional material into the ecosystem.
Information Governance.
Same framework as always.
No patient identifiable information enters Gemini through chat, Drive, Docs, Gmail, or Calendar.
Professional documents in personal Drive are fine if they contain general clinical content. Reflective accounts that anonymise the patient. CPD reading. Service development notes that describe populations rather than individuals.
Documents containing real patient information do not belong in personal Google Drive in the first place. That is a Trust documentation system question not an AI tool question.
If you are unsure where the line sits the AI Safety Check from Issue 07 covers it. The same nine questions apply.
Prompts Worth Saving.
The prompt I used. Best used in Gemini with Drive documents attached.
Act as a CPD reflection coach for a [profession] registered with [HCPC / GMC / NMC]. I have attached documents I have engaged with as part of my professional development recently. Your role is not to write my reflection for me. Help me identify and explore the learning so I can develop the reflection in my own words.
Using the documents please do the following.
Identify specific examples of learning, shifts in perspective, or changes in thinking that emerge from the material. Where possible quote the exact phrases or sections that suggest these developments so I can check them against my own experience.
Ask me three to five targeted reflective questions drawn from the content of the documents rather than generic reflection prompts.
Highlight any gaps, inconsistencies, or tensions across the documents that may be worth exploring further.
Do not write the reflective account itself. Stop once you have provided enough material for me to do the work myself.
A second prompt.
The Calendar weekly summary. Best used in Gemini with Calendar integration.
@Google Calendar Summarise my upcoming week. Identify the days with the heaviest commitments. Flag any conflicts, overlaps, or stretches of back to back meetings that look overly compressed. Highlight the best opportunities for focused work based on gaps in my schedule. Suggest 3 practical changes that would improve the overall week.
Opinion.
The tool will sometimes do more than you ask. The question is whether you notice.
Too many people use AI the same way. Ask. Answer. Regenerate. Ask again. They are using it like a search engine with better formatting. They get the answer they asked for and they move on. That is fine for some things. For the things that actually develop you it misses the point entirely.
The Gemini test is a good example of what changes when you slow down. I was not looking for inconsistencies in my own work. I was not expecting to leave with something I had to go and fix. I got that because I read the whole response rather than copying the useful parts and closing the tab.
AI is becoming infrastructure rather than destination. Gemini sits inside Drive and Docs and Gmail. Microsoft Copilot sits inside Word and Outlook. Apple Intelligence sits inside iOS. The tools are moving into the environment rather than waiting for you to come to them. The friction is dropping and it will keep dropping.
The question that follows is what separates clinicians who actually benefit from AI and clinicians who just have access to it. Access is not the differentiator anymore. Everyone with a Google account has an ecosystem. Everyone with an NHS Microsoft login has Copilot. What is left is attention.
The clinician who stays curious while the tool is running gets more than they asked for. The one who treats it like a vending machine gets exactly what they typed and nothing else.
The tools are getting more capable. They are also getting easier to fall asleep at the wheel of. The skill is the same one clinical practice already trains you in. Pay attention to what is actually happening. Notice the thing that does not fit. Bring your own judgement to what you read.
The tools change. The skill does not.
That is all for Issue 09. If someone you know would find this useful pass it on.
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The AI tools discussed in Clinically Intelligent are consumer products. They have not been independently assessed by the author against DCB0129 or DCB0160 clinical risk management standards, and they may not be approved for clinical use by your employer. Before using any tool described in this newsletter in connection with your clinical practice, you must satisfy yourself that its use is permitted under your Trust information governance policy, your DSP Toolkit obligations, your professional registration requirements, and any applicable contractual terms with your employer. The author accepts no liability for use of any tool or workflow described in this publication. Patient identifiable information must not be entered into any consumer AI tool under any circumstances, irrespective of any guidance contained in this newsletter.