Ten years ago, I left Johns Hopkins medical school to pursue the next question that fascinated me. Is MD available online? It was the most risky decision I have ever made and not only worried my parents, but frankly I had heart palpitations too.
At the time, my co-founder and I had just started working on a learning platform called Osmosis.org, and it was how we and many of our classmates passed exams at Hopkins University. Its vision was to make medical education more efficient and enjoyable by incorporating evidence-based techniques such as flipped classrooms and test-enhanced learning. A fun user experience and machine learning-powered personalized recommendations pioneered by companies like Facebook and Netflix. And given that the world is rapidly becoming more visual and digital, novel content formats such as short videos have also emerged.
Our experience since taking the plunge and dropping out of medical school is perfectly summed up by these words from Bill Gates: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
Started as a side project to be used by 120 medical students in our class, the project has far exceeded our wildest imagination, reaching well over 3 million learners worldwide and helping Johns Hopkins 25,000 auditoriums, including nursing, physician assistants, pharmacies, dentists, and even patients and their families. Ultimately, this reach and influence led to our successful acquisition by his 140-year-old medical and scientific publisher Elsevier, known by titles such as: lancet, celland gray anatomyand it’s a perfect match both from a culture and growth standpoint.
I had a great time growing Osmosis from 2 employees to 100 and Organizational Partners from 0 to 200+ and learned an enormous amount “in the real world”, but the idea of becoming a doctor is a big deal. My original goal was first built in a hospital. South Africa – Stayed on the thread.
Given the scale of Osmosis and the success of the exit, I returned to Hopkins as a junior medical student earlier this year and surprised many of my friends by swapping out my high-tech Patagonia vest for a short lab coat. The choice was the culmination of months of deliberation, and in the end he boiled it down to six reasons:
- Helping patients directly is a wonderful privilege that brings deep purpose. as written in the book idea of success, there is a natural tension between the pursuit of scale and direct impact. Growing Osmosis to millions of learners was incredibly fulfilling, but I missed the ability to directly help someone on a one-on-one level. This purpose is furthered by the nature of the problem. “A healthy person wants a thousand things. The sick man wants only one thing.“(Confucius). In other words, illness tends to define what is most important to people. Medical professionals have the privilege of being able to accompany their patients on the worst days of their lives with a generous heart and the knowledge and skills to help them get back to good health. Even with Osmosis, the initiatives that I find most rewarding are those that have the most direct impact on patients. For example, focusing on the often-ignored rare disease community. year of the zebra. Our simple, clear video style was originally developed for medical students, but has fortunately appealed to countless patients and families, sending thousands of comments such as: . “As a Diagnosed Person premature ovarian failure When I was 14, I didn’t understand a single thing my doctor said other than the fact that I couldn’t have children, so I’m glad I finally know what’s going on.I’m really thankful to you , I’m glad to have a better understanding! ” This desire to connect one-on-one with patients with incredibly diverse life experiences and circumstances was already demonstrated in my first few weeks back at Hopkins University, and I’ve found myself in a variety of disciplines, from pediatrics to neurology. Excited to rotate service.
- Learning medicine has never been more engaging and efficient. A key reason for Osmosis’ success is that we’re “in the game,” literally putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers.I am back to learning with Osmosis every day and feel confident I’m betting on my own medical research on the quality and efficacy of what we make.. Additionally, now that we’re part of the Elsevier family, we’ve included leading tools such as the Complete Anatomy platform for anatomy review and preparation for surgical practice, and ClinicalKey Student for access to thousands of USMLE exercises and category definitions. Complementary resources are now accessible.books like Nelson Pediatrics. Plus, the human body is an interesting thing, so I’m excited to reopen the opportunity to learn about how we work.
- “raise the line” requires both clinical and entrepreneurial experience. Our healthcare system faces immense challenges, from massive shortages of global healthcare workers to the cost and availability of life-saving medicines. Over the past three years, I have had the opportunity to interview hundreds of leaders. raise the line A podcast with Partners in Health’s Sheila Davis and others talking about global health equity. Mark Cuban, who shared his team’s efforts to bring down the price of drugs. Dr. Eric Topol discusses the future of AI and digital health. Dr. Ashish Jah on strengthening public health systems. and Arianna Huffington, who addressed the topic of provider burnout. Clearly, an innovative model is needed to “raise the line” – to strengthen the healthcare system. As such, I am looking forward both to seeing first-hand how the concepts discussed in the podcast are applied within the healthcare system, as well as building clinical systems. I hope to combine my experience and my entrepreneurial background to contribute to these solutions.
- Doing something difficult gives you a deep sense of fulfillment. “Do one thing every day that scares you. These little things that make us uncomfortable help us develop the courage to do the work.At the time of writing these famous words, Eleanor Roosevelt was imparting a Stoic philosophy of practiced discomfort that I found empirically transformative. But over the last few years, I’ve found myself mostly practicing. Physical From daily cold showers and winter expeditions jumping into ice water with Wim Hof, to Ironman runs and climbing Kilimanjaro for rare disease awareness, we’re plagued by discomfort. From running his 100-person company with plenty of autonomy to returning to the bottom of the totem pole and studying hard as a medical student is already a tremendous challenge, and that’s exactly what he’s pursuing. It’s worth it. Going into medical school, I’m paying attention (and reconfiguring) to two emotions in particular for her. fear and Frustration. fear is an opportunity for growth. Frustration is an opportunity for innovation – Indeed, frustration with how inefficient the medical education system is (e.g. hundreds of long, passive lectures) led to the founding of Osmosis. There is so much room for improvement in our healthcare system, so I am excited to experience these frustrations firsthand again.
- create the future Related to this last point, one of the most compelling reasons to return to medical school at Johns Hopkins University, in particular, is cutting-edge research in some very exciting fields. Two that I will cover are artificial intelligence (AI) and psychedelics. Recent developments and releases of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have attracted public attention, and Hopkins is credited with his track record of applying his AI to critical medical problems such as detecting liver cancer and sepsis, as well as the “organoids It has pioneered innovation in areas such as intelligence. and Brain Computer Interface. Another field, psychedelics, has recently undergone a resurgence in light of mental health crises ranging from anxiety and depression to post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders. Much of this revival was pioneered by Johns Hopkins University researchers at the Center for Psychedelics and Consciousness Research, who have published over 150 peer-reviewed papers on OCD and anorexia nervosa. We are actively conducting several clinical trials for symptoms such as It’s a fascinating time to be a student again and take electives in labs like this that will shape our collective future.
- Fulfillment of personal and family dreams. Last but not least, I returned to medical school with the hope of fulfilling a personal dream that had been fermenting for nearly 30 years since my father, a doctor, went to run a hospital in South Africa. An excerpt from my first medical school admission essay is as true today as it was nearly 15 years ago.My determination to become a physician was initiated by compassion, driven by the excitement and promise of medical research, and strengthened by the realization that physicians can simultaneously serve individual patients and the general public through leadership.Like many dreams, it is not only my dream, but also that of my family, who were refugees during the partition of India and Pakistan only two generations ago.of Philadelphia Business Journal Ten years ago, when we had just left Hopkins for the first time, I expressed this sentiment with my sarcasm.Osmosis plans to raise funding early next year, which means Gagrani and Haynes will have to answer the question of whether they’ll return to medical school. Gagrani said venture capitalists investing in the company “didn’t want to hear it.” [we’re] I’m going back to medical school but my parents don’t want to hear it [we’re] I’m not going back to medical school. ”
Taken together, these reasons compel me to step back from my day-to-day at Osmosis (which is more than empowered by Elsevier’s mission-driven team) and return to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A picture was drawn. This is my current course, but I’ve lived enough to know Mike Tyson’s famous words.Everybody’s got a plan until they punch their mouth’ sounds true. When I finally started medical school, I ran into a problem so unavoidable that I dropped out to pursue medical school full-time after successfully surviving two years. And fortunately for me and many others, the result was osmosis. I am always positive about this among other possibilities, but I am grateful that I am already back in Baltimore and hopefully able to “raise the bar” as a future medical professional.
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