Author: Amol Utrankar

Amol Utrankar Amol Utrankar (9 Posts)

Host of History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training, Former Twitter Social Media Manager (2014), and Former Undergraduate Guest Writer (2014)

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine


Amol Utrankar is a member of the Class of 2018 at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He studied economics and sociology at Rice University. Beyond the classroom, he conducts health systems and volunteers as an emergency medical technician. Amol is working towards a future as a physician-social scientist at the intersection of health services research and policy advocacy.

History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training

History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training is a discussion with students, clinicians and thought leaders at the forefront of medicine. At a time when the role of the physician, the landscape of the health care system, and the impact of technology on patient care are rapidly evolving, History & Physical aspires to answer the question, "What does it mean to be a medical student of the 21st century?"




Interview with Raj Gokal

Wearable technology is booming right now, Jawbone Up, Fuelbands, Fitbits, and even Samsung getting into the market. But what about medical wearables? Is there space for technology that creates continuous streams of clinical-grade data that health care professionals can utilize? And how can medical students get into that entrepreneurial space? We recently chatted with Raj Gokal, entrepreneur in residence at Rock Health, co-founder of Sano Intelligence, for the second in our five-part series about entrepreneurship.

Interview with Shiv Gaglani

This episode is the first in a series on entrepreneurship in medicine. Our guest Shiv Gaglani is a student at both the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Harvard Business School. His ventures include the medical education company Osmosis and site Quantified Care. He’s also editor at Medgadget, a blog about medical technology. We sat down with him and picked his brain about what it’s like to fill gaps in medical education, be a medical student and entrepreneur, and more.

Interview with Ajay Major and Aleena Paul

There’s a lot going on social media regarding sharing information, discussion and, most importantly, authorship. The typical notion of publication in medicine — getting an article or paper in a prestigious journal with high impact factor — is falling to the wayside as the democratization of information renders researchers, physicians and medical students more accessible. We had a chance to talk with Ajay Major and Aleena Paul, two enterprising medical students from Albany Medical College, on how they are contributing to that movement. The duo are the founders and editors-in-chief of in-Training, our collaborators for this podcast, and are bent on creating a space online where medical student voices can be heard.

Interview with Dr. Atul Grover

As the health care landscape evolves in the coming years, how will academic medicine adapt? And what do these tectonic shifts in health policy mean for medical students? This week on History & Physical, we’re joined by Dr. Atul Grover, the Chief Public Policy Officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Dr. Grover leads the public policy, strategy and outreach efforts that advance the work of the academic medicine community. He talks about the pact made between the government and academic medical centers to support medical graduate training, why so much innovation can come from medical colleges, and what students can do to advocate for their future.

Interview with Dr. Bryan Vartabedian

As medicine moves into the 21st century, how will medical education adapt? Also, what is digital literacy, and what does it mean for the physician of tomorrow? Today, we have Dr. Bryan Vartabedian from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. When he’s not doing scopes as a pediatric gastroenterologist, Dr. Vartabedian blogs about the intersection of medicine and technology at 33Charts and can be found on Twitter at @Doctor_V.

Interview with Dr. Cranquis

This week, History & Physical sits down with Dr. Cranquis, who has been called the “grandfather of the Tumblr ‘medblr’ community,” and is the dean of the Princeton-Medbloro Teaching Hospital, the first Tumblr-based residency program. Dr. Cranquis is an urgent care physician and blogs about his experiences on Dr. Cranquis’ Mumbled Gripes. In this podcast, we spoke with Dr. Cranquis about the medical community on Tumblr, humor in medicine, and social media as a means of communication, coping and camaraderie for medical students.

Interview with Dr. Danielle Ofri

This week on History & Physical, Kevin Wang interviews Dr. Danielle Ofri. Dr. Ofri is the author of The New York Times best-seller “What Doctors Feel,” editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, contributor to The New York Times, associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, and internist at Bellevue Hospital.

Take Back the Conversation on End-of-Life Care

The epicenter of the debate surrounding costs and utilization of health care is on end-of-life care. A full one-third of Medicare expenditures are spent on chronic illness patients in the last two years of life. For perspective, consider this graph: our costs of care are comparable to those of European countries for the first five decades of life, but we spend twice as much on people in their sixties, thrice as much on people in their seventies, and over four …

Amol Utrankar Amol Utrankar (9 Posts)

Host of History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training, Former Twitter Social Media Manager (2014), and Former Undergraduate Guest Writer (2014)

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine


Amol Utrankar is a member of the Class of 2018 at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He studied economics and sociology at Rice University. Beyond the classroom, he conducts health systems and volunteers as an emergency medical technician. Amol is working towards a future as a physician-social scientist at the intersection of health services research and policy advocacy.

History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training

History & Physical: The Official Medical Student Podcast of in-Training is a discussion with students, clinicians and thought leaders at the forefront of medicine. At a time when the role of the physician, the landscape of the health care system, and the impact of technology on patient care are rapidly evolving, History & Physical aspires to answer the question, "What does it mean to be a medical student of the 21st century?"