Author: Alejandro Marcano

The floor is open for discussion, we like to know your opinions. This will be my first post of the kind and hope to follow up with many more. Most of the valuable substance of these type of posts will come from the comments area and social media discussions. The goal: get a convergent conclusion about the topics we discuss. ____________________ The story: Marky Jones is a 27 year-old charming young man who followed the advice from his parents and graduated from high school with honors, entered in a well-recognized college of engineering (a career well-suited for his smarts) and graduated top of his class. He was doing great on the path to work and develop a career in a prestigious company on the thriving healthcare industry. However, while being surrounded by the whole healthcare atmosphere, the “medicine bug” bit him and he felt the calling of becoming a physician… He thought that most of the time and resources spent on engineering education would be wasted. To only consider going back to school and learn not only a completely different kind of knowledge but also very standard and strict attitudes and skills; make this decision the hardest one that he […]

It has been a while since I last posted about “why should all med students have iPads,” it is about time to add some other facts to that. Now that you have decided to invest in an iPad (or any other kind of tablet for that matter), what can you do with it? For starters, what about having an entire medical library in your pocket? You could pull up the complete Gray’s Anatomy book with the touch of a button, not to mention the many apps available that feature highly detailed 3D human body models. Imagine yourself doing rounds during your internal medicine rotation and after an interesting case, you can immediately dig deeper on your digital copy of Harrison’s Principles of Medicine and build up on what you’ve just saw, then when it is still fresh in your head, no need to wait until you get home and maybe forget some details. Maybe you found an interesting research that you’d like to show your peers or your attending, pull it up in seconds, make annotations and share it with anybody. Apps such as UpToDate will maintain the most current knowledge at the tips of your fingers, readily available to […]

After wrapping up a second day of hearing so many ideas about start-ups in health care, Health 2.0 Spring Fling in Boston left me wanting to start my own company and join all the entrepreneurs that attended. As a small representative sample of the groups of entrepreneurs that form the Health 2.0 space, who better than the chairs of the Health 2.0 organization to interview?   Indu Subaiya, Co-Chairman and CEO of Health 2.0: “Is responsible for Health 2.0’s strategic direction and incredible production values. She started her career in health technology assessment at Quorum Consulting and then served as VP of Healthcare at Gerson Lehrman Group, an investment research firm. Before co-founding Health 2.0 she was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Physic Ventures, where she helped evaluate companies. When she is not running Health 2.0, she applies her producing and directing skills to making film.” Not to mention that she is also an MD who decided to take the entrepreneur path. I bet many of us can relate. Matthew Holt, Co-Chairman of Health 2.0: “Spent the 1990s learning from the best to be a health care futurist at Institute for the Future, and a survey researcher at Harris Interactive. In the early […]

At TEDMED we also had a a very interesting conversation with Jacob Scott (watch Jacob’s TEDMED talk) whose impressive background was strong enough to throw us out of concentration a couple of times. But behind all this great history there is a very simple and cool guy who we befriended along the conference social gatherings and with whom we hope to stay in touch. We spoke mainly about how med school need to change and we were surprised when later on fellow speaker Sandeep Kishore (watch Sandeep’s TEDMED talk) echoed the same feelings and thoughts about who is educating our future physicians. “Sunny” also was one of our favorite guys from TEDMED, he already added me to his Young Professional Chronic Disease Network (YPCDN) and we will definitely do anything in our power to help. Giving the fact that these two similarly made such an influence on us and on the crowd –and based on their common ideas– we decided to ask them the same questions. MC: You argue that the system selects the least creative candidates for medical school. What is the reason for this? Jacob: Not necessarily the least creative. It’s not selecting for creative people and I think that the more […]

Calling all Med Schools: the iPad is here, have you noticed? Or do you live under a rock? It’s been just a week since Apple announced the release of the new iPad and we have all witnessed the hype going on. Some new features, better processor and screen… and the long and endless lines outside of Apple stores. How many of these extremely excited buyers – who couldn’t wait to get their hands on this piece of technology – are actually getting the iPad for education purposes? There have been some studies that advocate the use of these new technologies such as tablets as very effective learning tools. In one study conducted in the Abilene Christian University, the investigators proved that students equipped with iPads performed better than their paper-based peers. They argue that these results are due to the iPad’s stimulation of “learning moments,” helping students make more efficient use of their time; while also making them feel more satisfied. Another study conducted in the UK assessed how mobile technology enabled medical students to learn. They found that having quick access to key information and being able to conveniently reference them is a major advantage over the conventional learning methods […]