Orthobullets tool enables tracking, reporting resident performance data

This month, we interviewed Derek W. Moore, MD. Dr. Moore is the founder and CEO of Orthobullets.com, a popular website for orthopedic learning with a unique structure in which content is created and edited by surgeons from around the world.  It has quickly proven to be a valuable resource for many who are studying for board exams and reviewing orthopedic topics.

Matthew DiPaola, MD, and Orrin I. Franko, MD: Tell us about Orthobullets. 

Derek W. Moore, MD: Orthobullets.com is an orthopedic education website with a focus on preparing orthopedic surgeons and trainees for standardized exams, including the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery Part I and maintenance of certification. In addition, the site contains tools to help the practicing orthopedic surgeon communicate and consult with colleagues. You can watch expert surgical videos, share surgical cases, and create practice tests for yourself and residents. The key competitive advantage of Orthobullets.com is the “for-surgeon, by-surgeon” mentality that continues to attract orthopedic surgeons to our site. Through their collective contribution, the site continues to evolve and improve.

DiPaola and Franko: What is your mission?

Moore: Our mission is to educate and empower physicians to help improve the care of patients.

DiPaola and Franko: How did you start Orthobullets?

Moore: I founded Orthobullets after returning to residency following a period as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and realizing that there were opportunities for improvement in the orthopedic training process. Since then, we have grown and now have an incredible team of surgeons who are passionate about education and continue to make company decisions.

DiPaola and Franko: How do you think the Internet has changed orthopedic education?  Where would you like to see it go?

Moore: The Internet has done amazing things to make our lives easier and more fun, but we are only beginning to see its full potential. In my opinion, this effect will be most profound in the fields of education and medicine. I hope that someday the internet will allow all physicians worldwide to have access to the best training available and all patients worldwide to have access to the “right” physicians needed to solve their problem.

DiPaola and Franko: Tell us about the Orthobullets community? From what we understand you have a large team of orthopedists who write and review questions and content?

Moore: Orthobullets.com was designed to improve through the communal efforts of those who use it as a learning resource. Our content is created by an experienced team of orthopedic surgeons at every level, from residents to full professors at prestigious medical centers. This creates a rigorous multilevel peer-review process that gets fine-tuned based on member feedback. As a dynamic medium, we are able to constantly improve topics and questions as new studies come out or practice patterns shift.

DiPaola and Franko: I have heard about your new product PASS (Provider Assessment of Specialized Skills), which recently launched. What problem is it trying to solve?

Moore: We believe there is a wonderful opportunity to improve resident education by developing a standardized global curriculum and integrating it with analytic reporting and evaluation tools. Under the current system, the learning objectives for a resident are not always clearly defined, and the evaluation cycle is often delayed. Residents receive delayed, non-specific feedback and, as a result, cannot improve their performance. Faculty members are often completing evaluations months after an educational event. It is like waiting until the 18th hole in golf to tally your score, instead of keeping track after each hole. The data loses accuracy and more resources are consumed trying to remember all the data at the end. This scoring system would never be acceptable for clinical trial reporting tools. Why is it an acceptable scoring method to evaluate resident performance? In addition, training institutions utilize a lot of expensive faculty resources in the evaluation process. We believe there is a clear valuable proposition here if the right technology is built.

DiPaola and Moore: How does PASS work?

Moore: PASS enables tracking and reporting of objective resident performance data. On a real-time, frequent basis, PASS collects information on the six Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) core competencies. The feedback loop to the residents is immediate so they can take corrective action and learn more effectively. Program directors can monitor residents’ performance to improve the educational process. Furthermore, analytic tools facilitate the ACGME biannual reporting process.  

DiPaola and Moore: Residents currently rely on Orthobullets as a “self-study” tool. Will this change now that Orthobullets is a platform in which they are evaluated?

Moore: Orthobullets was founded on the principle of advocating for residents, and we will never lose sight of that goal. The Orthobullets.com “self-study” platform will remain unchanged and only certain, clearly identified tests can be graded. The residents have to “opt-in” to the PASS evaluation platform before any information is shared with their training program.

We want to emphasize to residents that PASS was developed to improve their learning experience, not to “police” it. We hope PASS will help all residents pass their boards and ensure they have the technical skills required to practice independently upon completion of their training. Taking care of patients is a privilege we have as physicians. It is our responsibility to effectively pass the required skills to the next generation of physicians. If we do it well, the impact on society is huge.

DiPaola and Franko: What is the biggest challenge that you deal with as an entrepreneur? 

Moore: Building a business we as physicians can be proud of, yet at the same time is sustainable and profitable and rewards our shareholders.

 

Matthew DiPaola, MD, is an assistant professor and shoulder and elbow specialist in the Department of Orthopedics at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He is a writer for iMedical Apps and co-founder of Touch Consult, a developer of team-based medical software to improve signout. He can be reached at matthew.dipaola@wrightstatephysicians.org.

Orrin I. Franko, MD, is a PGY5 orthopedic resident at UC San Diego. He has an interest in promoting mobile technology within orthopedic surgery and founded the website www.TopOrthoApps.com to help surgeons and trainees find the most relevant orthopedic apps for their mobile devices. He can be reached at orrin@toporthoapps.com.

Derek W. Moore, MD, can be reached at Lineage Medical LLC, 1 Broadway St., 14th Fl.,Cambridge MA 02142; email: derekwmoore@yahoo.com.

Disclosures: Franko and DiPaola have no relevant financial disclosures. Moore is the founder and CEO of Orthobullets.