EndoGoddess

EndoGoddess

Sunday, June 24, 2012

July Reflections



Upon the eve of each July, it has become my tradition to reflect on my career and look at my letter of acceptance into medical school framed above my desk (pictured above, my maiden name Jennifer Leigh Shine). As you may know from reading this blog, I am a dreamer. Then again, this whole career in medicine started as a dream.





In college, I was originally a journalism major with a dream of being a science correspondent on the Today Show that I watched religiously (and still do). However, my freshman year, as I began to miss the science classes that I so loved in high school, my dreams turned to the possibilities of a career in medicine. It was exciting to think about a career that combined science, communication, excitement, and helping people. I fearlessly and confidently pursued my premed course work with a hunger to fulfill my dream and to become a doctor. I never paid attention to the concerns of not getting into medical school that some of my other student colleagues expressed. I knew that I was going to succeed in becoming a doctor. That tenacity and confidence along with good grades, hospital volunteering, excellent MCAT scores, and a great essay did indeed allow me to enter medical school and become a doctor. As I reread my medical school essay each July eve, I ask myself: Have I satisfied that hunger that I had? Have I stayed true to my original dream? A portion of my original essay is as follows:


My achievements have shown me that I have what it takes to be a great physician but my heart tells me that I want to be a physician. While volunteering in the burn ICU, I changed dressings and cleaned wound infections. As I got to know the patients, I became fascinated and inspired by their determination, the loving support of their families and the medical staff, and the healing that I witnessed. I noticed first hand that every patient's world was important and their role in it was precious. The medical staff gave the patients the ultimate gift of a second chance to play that role and to have 'a moment in time when you're more than you thought you could be, when all of your dreams are heartbeat away'. I desire with all my heart to have the power as a physician to give this gift to the patients that I am lucky enough to meet.





As a medical school graduate and physician now 12 years later, I am a lot less cheesy and would never again quote a Whitney Houston song in an important essay, but I am happy to report that that young woman still lives inside of me. As a mobile health entrepreneur AND a physician, I am living the ultimate dream: creating a vision of good health using mobile phone tools that are a perfect fit into the precious and important lives of patients. I challenge you to ask yourself if you too are staying true to your dreams? :)

Friday, June 22, 2012

MedStartr Launch: July 4th!



The innovative 'kickstarter' crowdfunding site for healthcare projects, MedStartr, will be launching on July 4th! This means that on July 4th, you can start making donations and receiving rewards in relation to the projects that interest you the most.




The link directly to the EndoGoddess App Project on the beta site is here for a sneak peak before the launch: http://beta.medstartr.com/projects/19-endogoddess-diabetes-app-clinical-trial-fundraiser

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Building EndoGoddess Kids App




I am super excited to announce that work on the EndoGoddess Kids App will begin through the 10x accelator program on June 25th! 10x is a mentorship-driven investment program designed for energetic and game-changing entrepreneurs. 10x is partnering with Ohio’s New Entrepreneurs (ONE) Fund, an innovative business accelerator designed to attract and retain the best and brightest talent in Ohio. Teams such as the EndoGoddess Team are awarded $20,000 to bring a project to life over a 10-week period.






The EndoGoddess Team will be creating the new EndoGoddess Kids App built for young children with type 1 diabetes and their families. The app will include a new rewards and gaming feature similar in concept to the classic Tamagotchi virtual pet (pictured above). The virtual pet, which will need to be 'fed' by recording glucoses within the app, is expected to encourage engagement in daily diabetes glucose checking by the child based on appointment dynamic game mechanics theory.






The EndoGoddess Kids App virtual pet will include a reincarnation of my sweet golden retriever, Cooper Dyer, who passed away last year due to cancer. So, needless to say, the EndoGoddess Kids App is a labor of love for me. I will share details of the process and of course information about the launch toward the end of the summer. So excited!!

Friday, June 8, 2012

mHealth Crowdfunding Issues


This blogtalk radio edition of mHealth Zone does a great job of discussing the current issues involved with crowdfunding in medicine. Hosts Ben and Corey chat with Steven Greene, Chairman of the Conversation, Sperlingreene PR and Communications, about how mHealth companies can position themselves to attract investors, the impact of crowdfunding, and the role of marketing, PR, and live events in mHealth. An additional panel discussion on crowd funding is featured with Mike Norman, Co-founder of Wefunder, Alex Fair, Founder and CEO of MedStartr, and Manoush Zomorodi, reporter.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

EndoGoddess App Crowdfunding

At the recent Doctors 2.0 & You conference in Paris that I attended, I heard a great presentation by Dr. Bertalan Mesko (also known as @Berci on twitter) about the power of crowdsourcing in medicine. Dr. Mesko created Webicina which provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics in over 17 languages using expert crowdsourcing communities.





Crowdsourcing is increasingly becoming a popular technique to help solve complex problems by leveraging the power of individuals and teams, mostly outside of traditional networks. Crowdsourcing provides a unique opportunity to exchange and share data and information through collective intelligence and providing a diverse array of solutions from solvers with experience across a multitude of disciplines. Crowdsourcing can be used not only to help solve problems but also to capture intelligence (data and information) in novel ways through the use of various platforms.






Kickstarter puts crowdsourcing into action by providing an online platform for funding creative projects. However, kickstarter does not accept medical projects. Kickstarter for medical projects is to launch in several weeks (mid June): Medstartr. Medstartr facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public and circumvents many traditional avenues of investment for projects. The term has been dubbed crowdfunding. Project owners choose a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen target is not gathered by the deadline, no funds are collected (this is known as a provision point mechanism). Money pledged by donors is collected using a third party source such as Amazon Payments. The EndoGoddess App Kickstarter/Medstartr submission video explains the crowdfunding project as follows:






Crowdfunding provides opportunities for the patients and their loved ones to give small scale financing support to health-related technologies that they want to see within the healthcare system that they are experiencing. Who better to invest in the healthcare system than the people who are affected most by it? In other words, a system for the people by the people. Makes sense to me, let's do it!  Here is the link to preview the EndoGoddess App crowdfunding project in kickstarter-format : .






Watch for the official launch of the EndoGoddess App crowfunding project on Medstartr in the coming weeks so you can donate! :)