Dr. Justin Barad, Founder/CEO of Osso VR (Podcast #44)
Justin Barad, MD is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and CEO of Osso VR. We had the privilege of hosting Justin as the keynote speaker of Penn HealthX’s 2019 conference, and he recently spoke with Ryan O’Keefe on episode #44 of the PennHealthX podcast. In discussing his journey through medicine, Justin also took us through his thought process of why he built a VR company to improve the quality of surgical training worldwide.
From the Gaming Industry to Medicine
Before college, Justin was fascinated with video game development and interned at Activision. While he had long held a passion for software & technology, a personal family experience motivated him to leverage that interest to help people with medical problems instead of focusing purely on entertainment. This led him to pivot from majoring in computer science to biomedical engineering in college and subsequently informed his decision to enroll in medical school.
The Origins of OSSO VR
One of Justin’s mentors, Henry Lin, MD at USC, once told him that “if you want to invent something, you need to understand the problem first”. As he progressed through his orthopedic surgery training at UCLA and at Boston’s Children Hospital, Justin noticed over the years that there were no tools that existed to prepare surgeons for procedures and scenarios that they may not expect, or even those that are common like radial fractures. During surgical training, and even one’s career, the types of cases that one gains experience with is largely determined by the types of patients who come through during their rotation when they are on call. This results in ‘chance’ playing a big part in the scope of procedures that trainees are exposed to, as well as their frequency of practice with different procedures.
In a 2017 study published by Brian C. George, MD in the Annals of Surgery, 31% of graduating surgical residents could not operate independently without supervision for some of the most common procedures despite 14 years of education and training. Furthermore, the library of procedures has grown significantly over time, surgeons fundamentally do not have the capacity to become proficient in all of them due to the lack of practice and cases.
Justin saw an opportunity and a clear need that he believed technology could solve. While he realized the current model of surgical training needed to evolve in order to consistently deliver the quality of care that patients deserve, Justin also noticed the inefficiency of purely hands-on surgical training also affected the adoption of new medical technologies due to lack of surgeon proficiency using new tools, which stemmed from the lack of training. All of this ultimately affects the quality of care that patients received, and Justin envisioned that VR could help level the playing field by providing surgeons with a training platform while reducing patient risk.
“I cared so much about this, that even if it didn’t work, I would have been so happy that I tried to do it or at least made progress for everyone else”
Deviating From the Traditional Path
Around 2012, VR was a new technology that was gaining significant hype thanks to the release of the Oculus Rift. With a co-founder that he met online in an Oculus forum, they developed a demo and entered a competition that they subsequently won. This led to an initial round of investment of $400,000, which forced Justin to consider reconsider his career path. This success brought him to the critical crossroad of deciding between continuing down the path of academic medicine or jumping into starting a software company from scratch.
At the time, Justin was completing a Biodesign Innovation fellowship at Stanford. Concerned about the risk of deviating from the prescribed path typical of medical training, he sought out conversations with family, mentors, and friends. Over time, he recognized just how much he cared about the problem he was trying to solve. At a fellowship interview, Justin was told to not worry about doing something ‘different’, and to “do what you are passionate about and success will find you”. He realized, in his own words, that “I cared so much about this, that even if it didn’t work, I would have been so happy that I tried to do it or at least made progress for everyone else”. His personal experience as a surgical trainee dedicated to becoming a good surgeon drove Justin to develop a deep understanding of the problem at hand and fueled his passion to drive his idea forward.
Starting from Scratch
While starting Osso VR with his technical co-founder across the country, Justin quickly realized that setting up and running a company involved tackling tasks that he never had dealt with in medicine. From learning how to set up payroll, recruit employees, and fundraise, it was a steep learning curve of “making something happen out of nothing”. After a few months, OSSO VR signed their first deal and has since seen organic growth and increased interest across the world.
Justin emphasized the joy he finds in working with his team, and the importance of building a strong culture based on honest, compelling storytelling. Being able to convey your story helps convince people to not only work for you but to invest in you and help promote your mission.
Leveling Up with Osso VR
In a clinical validation study at UCLA published in the fall of 2019, it was concluded that the 10 surgeons trained in Osso VR to ‘proficiency’ performed 230% better than the 10 surgeons were trained traditionally using lectures and technique guides. The blind assessment was made using OSATS (objective structured assessments of technical skills). This outcome showed that Osso VR’s platform worked better than even what Justin had expected, in its ability to train surgeons in ways that improve their technique, efficiency, and efficacy. He believes the reason for the advantage stems from Osso VR’s ability to provide a platform that allows you to develop the experience needed so the steps of the procedure are mentally autopilot — in essence, those 10 surgeons were able to perform on auto-pilot without having to question their next steps.
The Future of Osso VR
Justin envisions Osso VR potentially playing a future role in board accreditation of surgeons, and even within hiring practices. Currently, hospitals and practices hire surgeons largely based on their resume, making educated guesses on their technical proficiency based on where they trained, their mentors with no standardised tool to make an objective assessment on their skills. Osso VR has the potential to provide not only a training ground for surgeons but also to become an assessment tool as well. It can not only provide objective feedback on performance, but reduces the barriers that traditionally prevent surgical teams from training and practicing together more frequently, and with lower stakes.
“One day it will all make sense”
A 2016 study showed that physicians are relatively risk-averse. But for some of us, at some point in our education and career, we may inevitably be consumed by an internal debate on whether pursuing a passion that leads down an untraditional path is the right decision or not. Whether it be applying to medical school, or deciding to detour from a traditional academic medicine career, the advice that Justin received from various mentors in helping guide his decisions included having “faith, stick to your guns and keep moving forward”, because “one day it will all make sense”. His commitment to solving a problem that he understood deeply and was passionate about was the fuel that has propelled his career and his team, and we look forward to following along as Osso VR grows.
