The global Elsevier Hacks Incubation program which focused on “the creative face of science and medicine” unveiled its top three startups during its pitching finale at Elsevier headquarters. After three months of relentless iteration, development, and mentoring, the finalists competed for a $10,000 cash prize by showing off their prototypes powered by Elsevier’s leading medical content platform.
The teams won last year’s #ElsevierHack in Helsinki, which brought together 60 of the brightest medical students from around the world. Each team had access to extensive training and guidance in tech development, UX and UI design, and pitching skills.
Technology supporting future doctors
Medical training requires years of research and preparation, but when it comes to accessing updated and relevant content, the current infrastructure stops students in their tracks. According to one of the participating students, the lifespan of medical knowledge is 5.5 years, which causes the student to worry that by the time any student graduates, this body of knowledge will be partially inaccurate or obsolete.
All teams worked to create learning tools that medical students can use to better navigate the complexity of medical literature research, patient cases simulation, and test preparation. Each solution is plugged into Elsevier’s content platform, which aggregates the world’s newest and best resources in the field of science, medicine and technology.
Living and breathing the challenge of preparation in the medical field is a major motivator for the teams and warrants a deep understanding of end users’ needs and learning preferences. The litmus test is that of understanding and incorporating live user feedback, paired with a solid business model, which is needed to ensure the sustainability of each solution.
The finalists pitched for investment at Elsevier’s headquarters
The Demo Day began at 10:00 am with two short introductions from Gemma Simpson — Director of Marketing & Education and Jan Herzhoff — Managing Director APAC & Education at Elsevier.
The global incubation program was then ready to unveil the final MVPs and prototypes developed by the teams during a period of 12 weeks. With a diverse group of teams—each member coming from a different country — they worked remotely with each other and with the mentors.
Mid-way through the program, each startup went through a crash test with the BeMyApp team and with their mentors. Following that, two decided to pivot and look at different technology stacks or at a completely different delivery method for their original ideas.
Pitching started immediately after, until 12:30 pm when teams were also invited to show off their prototypes to staff, and have interviews with the Elsevier crew.
Powercards: a memory-boosting toolkit for high-performing medical students
Powercards’ mission is to make education exciting, versatile, and efficient for every medical student preparing to become a doctor.
The solution — an iOS app that fluidly combines multimedia content, photos, videos and lecture snippets into digital flashcards. By condensing information to essential concepts, students can improve their performance during steep learning curves and adjust the flashcard content to fit their preferred learning style.
Powercards allows students to collaborate on creating their flashcards, which is another driver of active engagement with the content. The most effective type of preparation is active learning, where both students and teachers engage in debates, expanding and clarifying concepts on the go.
“By harnessing a social aspect around the design and feedback of your flashcards the team behind Powercard can extend the conversation beyond the four people that happen to be in your dorm,” says David Game, one of Powercards’ mentors and Education eProduct Director at Elsevier.
The team received mentoring on UX, UI, mobile software development, business model development, and pitching. They conducted in-depth qualitative surveys of 231 first-year medical students from three different countries.
“I honestly feel like this app will help me get better grades” — happy Powercards user
The Alpha version will be released as a free toolkit for content creation, with the goal of becoming a marketplace where both students and content creators can monetise courses created and published on the Powercards platform. The team felt that community would play a critical role in the success of the platform, projecting a revenue of $500k by year 5, when the platform will reach 600k users.
Following the Spotify model, where content is easily licensed and shared, Powercards make access to high-quality medical content affordable. The cost of studying materials can reach $8000 per year, in addition to what students are already provided during their studies. With Powercards, the cost for one material can be cut down to 20%, from $300 for one standard test material, to a $75 Powercard.
The jury was keen to learn more about personalisation options embedded in the toolkit. Nathan Reiner, the CEO added that the team “wants to facilitate a wide range of learning styles. Studies have shown that the greater the learning modality, the better the cognitive performance. We are aware that we need to gain students trust, and ensure that each material can be rated by learners, reviewed, and priced fairly.”
Team Powercards:
Nathan Ratner (USA), Péter Ivanics (Hungary), Charlese Saballe (Philippines), Abhishek Gannu (India)
PatientX — the iOS simulator for diagnosis and clinical reasoning
The global misdiagnosis rate is 13%, and millions of people die every year because of errors in diagnosis. The roots of the problem start as early as the first year in a teaching hospital, when students have a chance to think critically about real-world patient cases.
Although there are modules testing only diagnosis skills, these are always graded, and rarely interactive.
PatientX is not only a great pre-medical practice tool, but also an environment where students are able to make the mistakes without putting patients at risk or getting bad grades.
The app combines game mechanics and classic chatbot functionality such as decision trees, to create a realistic discovery and diagnosis experience that spans over years of treatment options and patient history.
PatientX goes beyond clinical reasoning, and dives into treatment choices, prescriptions, and requests for further investigations. The app integrates with Elsevier’s scientific library where students can find the scientific evidence to back up their decisions and ultimately their diagnosis skills.
“We surveyed 1800 medical students from around the world, and discovered that 90% feel inadequate because of lack of practice, and because as interns they are not given enough opportunities to make independent decisions. We believe medical students should be able to make as many mistakes within a safe simulation environment. That’s the key to reducing the global error rate in clinical diagnosis.” — Alice
PatientX has the potential to become a two-sided marketplace, and expand its user base beyond just medical students. Every doctor needs to apply clinical reasoning in high-pressure situations, and PatientX provides the environment where realistic simulations keep staff on their toes.
PatientX does not currently have competitors in the market, which means that both the technology and idea have the first-mover advantage in teaching hospitals and medical universities.
Team PatientX: Eliza van Wulfften Palthe (Netherlands), Alice Leung (Australia), Alvaro Prados Carmona (Spain)
3. Foresight — providing real-time clinical and hospital data for students preparing for their placement
Medical students learn to apply their theoretical knowledge during placements at teaching hospitals. Oftentimes, before their placement begins, they may need to refresh their understanding of certain conditions, or revise best practices in the emergency room or in the triage room.
Sadly, information about what are the most common conditions in a particular hospital are hard to find. Students might be interested in learning about staff members with experience in specific conditions, or in understanding what type of conditions are most commonly treated at their designated teaching hospital.
With Foresight students will have access to practical guidance, study materials, and most common conditions associated with the hospital they will be working in for the duration of their placement. The App currently integrates with NHS emergency data sets for private and public hospitals.
80% of students interviewed found the application very useful, but only 63% would be interested in paying for it. Further to user research with students, the team met Faculty Members and Medical Staff who thought that Foresight could become a useful app for locum doctors as well, who need to prepare for their shifts at various hospitals in the UK.
Foresight’s mission is to improve patient care by ensuring that every medical student and future doctor is as prepared as they can be. Seeking volume and scale initially, Foresight plans are to monetise the app by striking partnerships with the Jordan University of Science and Technology and with King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
“Although monetizing the data gathered from community input and interaction is very appealing, we decided to look for a business model that is more in line with our values, and with what will drive trust and engagement on our platform. Foresight is in many ways similar to TripAdvisor. As the community grows and we gather more historical input, we will see users answering each other’s questions. This is incredibly valuable for medical students who need to prepare for unpredictable conditions in the hospitals they’re studying in.” -
Judges were interested in learning more about the possibility of using data sets to predict the occurrence of certain conditions in specific regions and hospitals. Another question addressed the problem of community engagement and incentivising students to respond to questions on the platform.
“Foresight can very well become a social platform for medical students, where each contribution leads to an increase in rank or score. Students love being the leaders of their communities, and by integrating the social recognition aspect will be key to the success of our platform” — commented Mao Fong Lim, the CEO of Foresight, and medical student at King’s College London School of Medical Education
Team members — Mao Fong Lim (Malaysia), Vijay Krishna Chalamalasetty (India), and Basil Badwan (Jordan)
Pitching for investment — a clear winner
Each team had 15 minutes to present their pitches, and demo their prototypes, followed by questions from judges. The judges were Oliver Dumon — Chief Product Officer, Elizabeth Munn — Managing Director of Content , Mike Harley — Head of strategy, Health, and International Markets, Tim Morris — Product Director, Gemma Simpson — Director of Marketing and Education, and Jan Herzhoff — Managing Director APAc & Education — on behalf of Elsevier, and Prof. John Sandars from Edge Hill University.
Projects were judged on 4 criteria: business challenge or problem relevancy within medical education; communication and pitching quality — specifically being able to highlight the USP, innovation and originality — just how different the idea is from existing solutions; and business model — is the idea execution allowing for a sustainable business model, and are end users willing to pay for the solution? The last criteria was the quality and completeness of the prototype.
After two hours of deliberation over lunch, the judges ultimately reached a decision, which favoured a team that had advanced their most during the 12 weeks of incubation across all project dimensions: prototype, commercialisation, user research, design and development, and product-market fit.
The winner — PatientX was awarded $10,000 to continue working on the idea.
“We had no ideas that we, as medical students, can expand our skills into entrepreneurship, but thanks to the Elsevier incubation program, we’ve come a long way from when we started last year, and are very grateful for the learning journey!” — said Alice, one of the PatientX team members
All participants met with the judges and received feedback on their work, as well as guidance on how to take the idea further, if they choose to. The event wrapped up with an informal dinner in the City.
Stay updated with the progress of teams via Twitter — @PatientXbot @WeAreForesight and @studywithpower, and with the Elsevier Incubation Program @Elsevier_Ed.
