InsightMedi and the Limitless Physician
A pursuit to remove our limitations
Update, March 2018: the free, public version of InsightMedi as featured in this article is not available anymore. The blog post remains live for historic archiving purposes. Nevertheless the ideas, goals, and overall vision remain the same.
I have a weak spot for movies like Limitless or Lucy. They make me think about the possibilities — and consequences — of being able to use a bigger percentage of our brain’s capacity. How would we be different if we were able to unlock another (hopefully better) version of ourselves? The idea is as scary as it is fascinating.
While we wait for that day to come, I frequently ask myself: Are we doing our best to improve and help others in the community improve? The closest path I know to increasing our capacity as human beings, is through the use of technology, and that’s the path we follow.
Today we’ve launched a new version of InsightMedi that aims to help our community — through the use of technology — become a more capable version of themselves, a limitless doctor. Limitless at least when it comes to one of the biggest roadblocks of the human being: language.
Since its conception, InsightMedi has existed with the purpose of helping healthcare professionals, and medical students from around the world, to be the most effective version of themselves possible. If you think about it, any doctor/nurse/student is only as effective as the combination of his/her own skills (knowledge + experience) plus that of his/her network. Through the adoption of InsightMedi, we want to help this growing community create enhanced healthcare professionals by expanding their skills, and their network, endlessly through time.
This thought is the key behind the selection of medical images as the core of InsightMedi. Images are universal, they know no barrier of language or geographical regions. They can say a lot within the silence of a physician’s thoughts. This is why they have been relevant since the days of Leonardo Da Vinci, and also why they keep being extremely relevant today.
The challenge lies in the fact that an image by itself, particularly a medical image, can be extremely complex to analyze, or it may even exist to accomplish different goals (the same image can be used to ask for a second opinion, evaluate a student, prove a point, and so on). This is why text has its own place as a great companion of images. With the use of text, a physician can pinpoint the purpose behind the act of sharing that image. Added text is the key to guide others in the community towards the goal of cracking a complicated diagnosis, achieving knowledge transfer, or igniting a great debate.
The problem is that text is not universal. Text capacity to transmit information is limited by the interpreter’s ability to process it, and it changes along with the boarders of our countries. Our goal to connect every doctor, every nurse, and every medical student is not possible unless we solve this limitation. We need to help our users become expert linguists without any effort on their part. That’s a key milestone in the road to becoming a limitless doctor.
Since technology is our ally, we set out to make InsightMedi a tool that vanishes language limitations and helps us bring our community closer. This is part of the big commitment we made back in May at DreamIt’s Demo Day presentation. This new version of the app is us, delivering on our promise. After all, we do believe in putting our product where our mouths are.
If you download InsightMedi today you’ll find our first attempt to solve the language limitation using technology that’s widely available. We’re aware that this is far from perfect, but we’re confident that it is a first step into the right direction. We’ll grow, improve, and advance along with the translation technology itself.
Starting today, every InsightMedi user will have the option to translate the text of an image or comment, from any language into his/her own. This way there’s no real barrier between the author of the picture and the consumer of the content. It’s been freed of its own limitations.
Translation for image descriptions and comments work across the whole platform and we’re really excited, not only to see the reception of the feature, but to measure its effect on the levels of engagement. Our idea behind this implementation is to promote interesting conversations to create more value for everyone involved.
We’re committed to do our part in the moving of the needle when it comes to digital health. We believe in the use of tech tools to create value, connect people without discrimination, and make a positive impact in the quality of the sanitary attention in the world.
Wanna help? Get in touch!
Thanks for reading,
Juan.
If you want to know more about InsightMedi, you can always visit our website, read about our team story, the evolution of our product, or go by our social media accounts at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay up to date with our latest news.
