In our latest podcast, Dr. Mohamed Elshazly of Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar (WCM-Q) discusses a number of the innovative projects in which he is involved, ranging from crowdsourcing CPR, a relational database of disease manifestations, and the use of social media in medical education. Dr. Elshazly gained his MD degree from WCM-Q in 2010 with Honors in Academic Achievement. He undertook a residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and completed a fellowship in Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology at the Cleveland Clinic. He is a member of the American Heart Association and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and is American Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology, Dr. Elshazly has received a variety of awards for his research, and has published papers on various aspects of cardiology including lipids, prevention, exercise testing and atrial fibrillation. He was an instructor in clinical medicine and taught medical students at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, and currently instructs students at WCM-Q.
Projects Dr. Elshazly discusses are:
Crowdsourcing CPR: In the US, over 350,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest every year, 70% at home and only 10% survive [1]. Dr. Elshazly is currently building a company to crowdsource CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and defibrillation, allowing every citizen to become a first responder. This involves working with a group of engineers and physicians in the USA to build a system that uses smart phones and watches to rapidly identify cardiac arrest victims and connect them with nearby CPR trained first responders. This system will help identify more cardiac arrest victims and reduce the time to initiation of bystander CPR, thus, improving survival and outcomes of these victims. It will also help raise CPR awareness and education in the community.
COR Medical Technologies: Dr. Elshazly holds the position of Associate Editor – Middle East for COR Medical Technologies, which provides an online relational database of disease manifestations, including symptoms, lab test results, ECG findings and comorbidities. The COR database can contribute to differential diagnosis, continuing medical education, and considerably more.
Social media in medical education: Dr. Elshazly sees social media as a badly underestimated tool in health education. He is currently attempting to create a cardiac ECG learning module on Twitter that helps medical fellows learn ECGs. In his opinion, medical students should get into the habit of using social media, amongst other tools, to know the latest updates in medicine, as they do to get updates on politics or sports for example. Faculty can also use this platform for global education of students and other physicians instantaneously and without borders. You can follow Dr. Elshazly on Twitter at @mbelshazly.
References
- Benjamin EJ, Virani SS, Callaway CW, Chang AR, Cheng S, Chiuve SE, et al. Heart disease and stroke statistics—2018 update: a report from the American Heart Association. Circulation [Internet]. 2018 Jan 31 [cited 2018 Feb 15]; 135:e1-442. Available from: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/circulationaha/early/2018/01/30/CIR.0000000000000558.full.pdf doi: 10.1161/cir.0000000000000558