MedCases

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Bruce Speyer: “Hello, I’m Bruce Speyer, and I’m with OBGYN.net. I’m proud to introduce today Dr. Jeff Levy. We’ve been working with Dr. Levy for four years now since the beginning, as long as OBGYN.net’s been around. Dr. Levy’s had many ventures but what he’s doing now is called MedCases.com and he’s the founder of MedCases and also their Educational Director. MedCases is interactive CME on the Internet. Dr. Levy, could you describe what inspired you to do MedCases and take such an interactive and Internet based approach?”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “I’ve been dealing with medical education now for about the last ten years and in education there are some significant problems that are occurring. Number one – our medical students are not having as much of a chance to have clinical encounters because we’re sending our patients home faster. Number two – our faculty is not able to teach as much because they have so many clinical responsibilities. Those two things coupled together have really decreased the amount of education that our medical students and our residents are getting, and it’s been very distressing. I’ve been a Medical Student Director, a Residency Director, and I’ve been Director of the National CME program so I really understand the nuances and what’s happening in medical education. I’m very disturbed in what’s happening and what’s occurring, and I want to make a difference - I want to make a change. Over the last ten years I’ve also been involved in medical education in technology in the use of medical education. Technology, I think, can enhance the medical education process. We’ve worked with areas of laser disk, areas of CD-ROM, and most recently, and I think most importantly, the Internet is a real avenue to improve education at all levels.” 

Bruce Speyer: “I’ve looked at some of the MedCases examples and they’re quite impressive both in their quality and in the use of very interactive technology, plus I know you’re putting together dozens if not hundreds of these MedCases. Could you describe a little bit on how you’re accomplishing all of this?”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “Sure, the biggest advantage that we have is we’ve created an authoring, editing, and publishing system all over the Internet and really it’s a one of a kind process right now. We’ve created all the tools that an author will need to develop a case but we scaled it so we can have a thousand authors working simultaneously on different cases or we can have dozens of authors working on the same case and creating that case but sending it then through a very tough peer review process. So we have editors that are reviewing it that are national and international experts and making sure that the contents correct before we ever publish it. With this kind of process we really have hundreds of people that we’re working with right now across the country and soon to be across the world.”

Bruce Speyer: “We’re at FIGO, it’s the International Congress for Gynecology and Obstetrics which only happens every three years, and typically, at least in the United States, we think of CME as the credits are only useful for United States physicians. Is that the case with MedCases or is this applicable worldwide?”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “It’s very applicable worldwide and the reason is things are changing dramatically throughout the world right now. Today, we need mainly CME’s continuing medical education credits in the United States but there’s a huge change going on in Europe, and they’re going to require continuing medical education credits also for their accreditation process. So that’s occurring literally as we speak so things are going to change across the world very rapidly, and we really want to be at the ground floor in that change.”

Bruce Speyer: “I can speak for OBGYN.net and say we’re very impressed with MedCases. In fact, we have a license agreement; we were one of the very first licensees of MedCases. Could you describe a little bit about how MedCases would appear on OBGYN.net or other medical sites?”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “Sure, our goal is that medical MedCases is going to be a medical educational solution that you’ll find literally almost everywhere you go on the Internet. We believe very strongly in strategic partners, and OBGYN.net has always been a wonderful strategic partner with us. What we’re going to do is we’re going to provide a free case of the month on OBGYN.net, and you can find a urogynecology case on the site right now. Next month we’re putting on a breast disease case and we’ll go on and on for the next several months to several years. We think it’s important for people throughout the world to be able to try the cases because then I think that they’ll be more apt to use the products. Right now we literally have products for every level of education. We have products for medical students and medical student education, we have products for resident education, products for board review for when a resident is going into a specific specialty and needs to pass their boards and also the CME product. The CME product is what we’re working with you on and we’ve created that so your constituents can use it.”

Bruce Speyer: “I should also mention that even though Dr. Levy’s background is gynecology, MedCases are being applied to all different medical disciplines, and perhaps we’ll be able to use it on some of our other medical disciplines. It’s exciting technology because it’s the future of education, and the Internet is just exciting and this is pretty near technology for the Internet.”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “We’re really going to be in thirty specialties over the next 2 ½ years. Right now we’ve already launched our ob-gyn product. In about three weeks we’ll be launching a similar pediatric product, three weeks later after that is family practice. Three weeks after that is general surgery and then it’s on and on, every several weeks we’ll be launching a new product.”

Bruce Speyer: “That’s possible because of the publishing tool and the network of doctors and residents that you put together around that publishing tool. It’s very exciting.”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “We’re able to create contents much, much faster than the traditional model. As you know, when you write a book it’s usually a 1 ½ to a 3-year process. When we do a series of cases, even an entire curriculum, we can do it in weeks to months.”

Bruce Speyer: “Best of luck to you and your company.”

Dr. Jeff Levy: “Thank you very much.”

Bruce Speyer: “Thank you Jeff.”