Contributing Writer
Medical College of Wisconsin
Ghady Rahhal graduated from SUNY with a bachelors in Molecular Biology and minors in chemistry and philosophy. Shorty thereafter, Ghady moved to Boston and worked as a Network & Clinical Analyst for a healthcare company that focused on community-based care. Prior to attending college, Ghady lived in Lebanon which has given him an appreciation for Global Health - a field which he continues to be active in today. Currently, Ghady is a medical student at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Could you taste without a tongue? Smell without a nose? Feel without any hands? The answer may soon be yes. Scientists in Europe have just created a prosthetic limb that allows amputees to feel again. Prosthetics have come a long way. The earliest written record of prosthetics being used dates back to well over 2000 years ago when a prisoner without a leg used a wooden stump. In the 1500s, Ambroise Pare, a French surgeon, …
It’s not often that a medical student gets to lead a research project. It’s even more uncommon to see physicians-in-training solving complex problems in the fields of biotech and medical technology. That is, until you’ve met Nabeel Ali. Nabeel, a second-year medical student at Albany Medical College, paved a singular path to medical school. Starting as an electrical engineering major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he switched to biomedical engineering to pursue medicine. Just a few …
At any given moment in this hyper-connected era, we are beckoned by our smartphones, iPods, iPads and laptops to participate in the multiple spheres in which we exist. These “spheres” — our physical surroundings, families and friends, social media, blogs, e-mail — are simultaneously concrete and confabulated, yet they equally contribute to our identity. Navigating these arenas enriches and edifies our current existence with memories of old friendships and ever-increasing networks of new contacts while …
For students at West Virginia University School of Medicine, studying anatomy now consists of more than just furiously comparing textbook images to a cadaver. In addition to their traditional dissection-based coursework, they also learn anatomical structures from a living patient using ultrasound technology. Pioneered by Dr. Joseph Minardi, director of the emergency ultrasound fellowship at the WVU School of Medicine, the MD curriculum has begun integrating ultrasound education into all four years of its program. …
Adam Wong works at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, all of which, thankfully, can be abbreviated: ONC for Health IT. The development of health IT — which includes everything from electronic medical records to smartphone apps — is at its best a populist project, involving techies, patients, students and health care professionals. I spoke with Adam about some of the recent developments in health IT and how medical students can …
Advances in technology have not only dramatically changed health care, but have also changed the way we learn medicine. Gone are the days of carrying clunky textbooks. You can also put away your six different highlighters. Why? Because technology has become your new best friend. Having a smartphone—or better, a tablet—on hand has become an especially useful tool for navigating your studies. Here is a guide to some of the apps that I have found …
If your doctor and an algorithm arrived at two different diagnoses, which would you trust? Of course, it depends on the specific context but this question opens a much needed discussion about a transformative process occurring in medicine: computers are beginning to perform tasks of physicians. While modern medicine utilizes medical technology primarily as an aid for physicians, future technology may afford diagnostic capability that rivals that of humans. The question is, in what capacity …
Introduction to mechanical thrombectomy The progress of clinical medicine lies within the purview of translational research, for if change is constant through time, then normalcy is backwardness. Dr. Y. Pierre Gobin of Weill Cornell Medical College understood this axiom in 1995 when he began developing the first mechanical thrombectomy device, now FDA-approved, for treatment of acute stroke. The model for stroke treatment remains at the mercy of time. Acute stroke is a heart attack of …
The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting convened in Chicago this year with over 60,000 attendees. Yes, sixty thousand attendees. Physicians and medical students of all clinical specialties were joined by technologists, scientists, engineers, researchers, business personnel and many other professionals to network, enhance their educations, hone clinical skills and share cutting-edge research. A major hallmark of the RSNA conference is participation by the imaging technology industry. Diagnostic radiology and the imaging industry …
When first-year medical students at Rush Medical College sat down to take their cell and molecular biology block exam this past September, they were not handed stacks of stapled paper. Rather, the students received a single sheet of paper with instructions on taking the exam on their iPads. This change, however, did not catch any student off guard. At the beginning of this academic year, Rush Medical College joined the ranks of other medical schools …
On October 4 – 5, 2013, the American Medical Association hosted the “Accelerating Change in Medical Education Conference” in Chicago, IL., bringing together leaders in the realm of medical education for discussions aimed at “closing the gap between current physician training and the needs of our evolving health care system.” In attendance were two in-Training editors, Emily Lu and Jarna Shah, who reported on the conference and offer their in-depth medical student perspectives on the …
In this day and time, the primary method of communication revolves around social media and technology. Phones, pagers, computers and tablets have overtaken the “snail mail” of a bygone era. No matter what remote corner of the planet you inhabit, you have the ability to stay connected with your loved ones and personal interests. In our careers, we have come to realize that multitasking, especially through web-related technology, is the most productive usage of our …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Toral Patel is a BS and MS graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in molecular biology. She is currently a Class of 2015 student at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, AL.
