Visualmed: Converting Landmark Clinical Trials into Visual Abstracts and Infographics

My biggest concern during my residency was to not having enough time to stay up to date with the latest medical literature. The stats on clinical gov website showed that every year more than 18,000 trials are being registered or published for dissemination. As a physician, it has become entirely impossible to stay updated with this much literature. And the rate at which new data is coming up is daunting for many.

The idea of Visualmed stemmed from this basic necessity that physicians and residents need a way to quickly access medical literature on the go and be able to apply this knowledge to their practice. I created my first visual abstract while I was in the ICU and my co-residents loved the idea of being able to quickly read the abstract of the study in a visual graphical format. It was something new and innovative. The initial feedback was tremendous and it led me to develop a platform where I can summarize all the landmark clinical trials so that people can access these graphics for educational purposes anytime they want.

The initial designs were condensed with colored backgrounds but with time I went towards more minimalism. The later design formatting received great feedback and I decided to make it standardized so that subscribers can easily relate and compare studies. With the steady growth of audience, i decided to develop an iPhone app alongside to make the accessibility more convenient. Based on the current model, the website and visual abstracts are free to access for everyone and the one time fee on the app helps sustain the web server. I publish visual summary of one new clinical trial every day and that not only helps me stay up to date with clinical data but also more than 1000 subscribers that are now part of Visualmed.