Medical Education with Dr. Neel Desai of MedFlashGo

VFH Episode 36

In this episode, Teri welcomes Dr. Neel Desai, a physician, innovator and the co-founder of MedFlashGo.

Dr. Desai has dedicated many years towards helping medical students to understand that there is so much more to medicine than just practising clinical medicine. He comes onto the podcast to talk about his brand new Amazon Alexa skill, MedFlashGo, the first voice-interactive medical question bank for medical students. It is a question bank/flashcard set geared for medical students to study for board exams using just their voice.

Key points from Dr. Desai!

A brand new way of helping medical students to learn the information they are required to know for their licensing exams.
Teaching medical students through voice and how this is helping students to be more comfortable using voice further on in their careers.

Interest in Voice

He has been fascinated with digital technology and gadgets for the last 20 years.
He was part of a podcast called the Happy Doc, which was focused on preventing burnout in doctors and medical students. While trying to figure out the pain points that frustrated physicians and medical students, they realized that poor technology was a huge factor.
To expand their horizons and improve their podcast, they started listening to voice influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk and found out they could use Alexa skills to achieve their main goal. They eventually fell into the voice community and it matched with their purpose for starting the Happy Doc podcast.
They realized that a lot of medical students are using online videos to learn and live stream lectures, which demonstrated that digital and individualized learning was the way to go.
They immersed themselves in podcasts and knowledge conferences to learn more about how they could use voice.

MedFlashGo

He co-founded it with his partner, Dr. Taylor Brana.
It’s a medical question bank for students in medical school who are studying for different exams. They just recently released the skill.
The skill is for studying for board exams. In the US there are 3 steps to becoming a licensed physician. Each step has important exams that one has to pass to move on to the next level.
The skill consists of hands-free medical flashcards on the go. The cards consist of test questions for the user. They can be either multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank questions about medical subjects for the user’s exams.
They currently have around 1,000 questions with a goal to cover step 1, step 2, step 3, and shelf concepts.

Medical Education with Dr. Neel Desai of MedFlashGo

The Process and Challenges of Developing the Skill

They partnered with developers and initially it was challenging.
They found a developer company in Silicon Valley to work with. The company was just starting out in the voice business when they starting working with them.
The iterations were not great at first, but they worked at it, and eventually, the iterations started working a lot better.
Alexa doesn’t have a medical dictionary, but she actually pronounces diseases, medication, and enzymes very well.
They beta tested the skill with medical students who wanted to be a part of something great because it helped them study.
They already had a community of medical students through their Happy Doc podcast so they reached out to the community to try out the skill. Students can use the skill while cooking, lounging, resting, cleaning, driving, or even exercising. Once the skill is enabled through an Alexa device, the skill can be used on a user’s phone using an Alexa app or on an Alexa-enabled device.

Shaping the Way Medical Students will Practice Medicine

One of the things they have been talking about with Happy Doc and MedFlashGo is learning, teaching, creating and practicing medicine in the century we live in.
Their focus is on teaching the next generation of medical students by creating new healthier learning systems by training them on voice early on. That will ensure that it will not be a big barrier to get them to adopt using voice speakers in healthcare facilities.