NHS doctor used AI to identify rare vitamin deficiency saving his dying mother

At 4 am in May, Edward Patrick received a phone call telling him to drive from Oxfordshire to Nottingham immediately — his mother was close to death. By the time he reached Queen's Medical Centre, he had already opened an AI tool on his phone and begun typing in her symptoms.

Ann Patrick, who is in her late seventies and has Parkinson's disease, had been admitted to the Nottingham hospital suffering continuous, unexplained seizures. Doctors could not identify the cause. The family was told she had only hours to live.

While Edward was driving, his brother sent him a text suggesting a vitamin deficiency might explain their mother's condition. At the hospital, Edward — an NHS anaesthetist — entered Ann's symptoms, medical scans, and test results into an AI tool. The tool identified a possible link between her long-term use of Parkinson's medication and a vitamin B6 deficiency that can, in rare cases, trigger severe seizures.

Edward shared the AI's findings with the medical team. Doctors administered vitamin B6 intravenously. The seizures stopped almost immediately.

There's no other way of describing it. Every time I tell the story, I feel like, 'Am I making this up?' To come from the jaws of death. She only had hours [left to live].— Edward Patrick, NHS anaesthetist

Edward described the moment as a "House moment" — a reference to the television medical drama featuring Dr Gregory House — a comparison that captures both the drama of the diagnosis and the unusual route by which it was reached.

Ann had developed rhabdomyolysis, a potentially fatal condition in which muscle tissue breaks down and releases harmful substances into the bloodstream, which can damage the kidneys. Severe seizures are among its possible triggers, according to the Cleveland Clinic, as cited by Hindustan Times. The Sunday Times reported that long-term use of certain Parkinson's medications can contribute to vitamin B6 deficiency, though complications as severe as Ann's are rare.

Since receiving treatment, Ann has not required another hospital admission and has shown significant improvement, including reported cognitive gains. She has had no further seizures.

I just can't get over that such a small thing can make such a large difference to whether you live or die.— Ann Patrick

I'm a proud mom, absolutely.— Ann Patrick

The case is being discussed in medical circles less as a story about AI replacing doctors and more as one about a rare drug side-effect that the existing clinical team had not encountered — and that a searchable AI trained on recent medical literature happened to surface at a critical moment.

Why it matters — The case illustrates both the potential of AI to surface rare drug-interaction knowledge in a crisis and the existence of a little-documented but life-threatening complication of a widely used Parkinson's medication that clinicians and patients may not know to watch for.

Reported by hindustantimes.com, thetimes.com