TopDoc

Project Description

The goal of this project is to create a application similar to “Duolingo”, but for medical education. Similar to learning a language, much of medical education involves repetition of concepts over years until it becomes second nature. Many physicians and other healthcare professionals use various books, question banks, and journal articles to keep refreshing their knowledge. These methods are tedious, boring, and requires lots of dedicated time. This new interactive application will include an algorithm that will proactively deliver medical concepts in the form of simple questions and puzzles to the physicians and students at random times during the day. The system will keep track of their progress based on their specialty and show stats from other users of the same specialty.

Goals

This will be a proof of concept application so we will only aim for basic functionality. The first part of the project will involve working as a team to plan out the user experience. We would like to create several simple “games” or “puzzles” that we can use for delivering the important medical content (ex. fill in the blank, multiple choice with a timer). This should also include creation of several creative awards and trophies as the user progresses through the content and consistently uses the app. All of the content added to the system will be formatted to support these games so that it continues to be engaging. The second part of the project will involve creating an algorithm for delivering these concepts based on prior performance so there is adequate repetition to master the concept. Last part will involve creating a simple iOS application that includes some or all of the games and incorporates the algorithm. We can meet with the team to discuss the goals in detail and make changes if necessary.

Constraints

Proof of concept application should be a well designed iOS application that can have preloaded content. We will eventually want to add a web interface for adding content but for the first version content will be provided using a CSV format. Ideally, it should be a native iOS application to provide the best user experience. More details can be discussed in the future with the students.

Impact

The application will be marketed to physicians and other healthcare professionals in the United States who need to continuously learn and take exams to maintain the credentials. Currently there are many outdated sources such as online question banks and long video lectures for reviewing these concepts. With this application, the professionals will be able to continuously learn while on the job. Eventually the application will be loaded with the latest medical concepts from peer reviewed publications.

Resources

Our team is based out of Lewisburg (at Bucknell Entrepreneur’s Incubator) and will be available throughout the project to meet and discuss the application. The students will also have direct access to physicians who will be creating the content. Students will also be added to our company Slack account to maintain the discussion. We will also provide additional technical resources as needed.

Group Summary

Studying medicine is tedious and repetitive work requiring immense amounts of studying and discipline. TopDoc would make this repetitive work more engaging using games, activities, and questions to break up the monotony. It will also provide a way for users to track their progress.

Identified Pains

Studying (especially for medicine) is tedious, monotonous, etc…
Making note cards is just as painful as the studying itself
It is easy for an individual to study information they already know and not continue the learning process

Proposed Problem Description

Learning medicine is not easy, and there are currently no existing (MAYBE LOOK IT UP) applications that helps ease the stress for medical students, specifically applications that tailor to each individual student.

Proposed Goals

Provide engaging study materials
Help medical professionals learn material in a smart and individualized way
Make learning fun! 🙂
Provide competition for students of the same discipline
Build all of this on a well designed mobile platform

Contributors

Lucas Nicolois, Sienna Mosher, Allan La, Lukas Munoz, Matthew Rogge

Brainstorming

Bobby Cao, Thomas Ficcadenti, Lucas Gregory, Jingya Wu, Stefano Cobelli

Our takeaways included learning through pictures instead of words, customized learning experience automatically adapted to different learning habits, feature for users to set different learning goals, and using quiz to tailor lessons to user’s knowledge.

BrainStorming sheet