So what is this Nerdcore Learning thing that you speak of? Well for those of you that didn’t meet Francis and I at the Nerdcore Learning booth at AMSA 2009 (American Medical Student Assn) in March, allow me to re-cap. We’re a publishing start-up devoted to developing unique study-aids for medical students.
We also happen to be super gaming and sci-fi geeks, so you maaay see the occasional reference to Star Wars peppered here and there. In a nutshell, going through med school it became apparent to us just how many of our friends shared our passion for medicine as well as geek culture.
And while we both have ‘other hats’ ie I work as a program director in a nationwide hospitalist practice and Francis runs an EHR venture in SF, giving back to similarly minded med students seemed something that was too fun to pass up. The best part is that a portion of the proceeds from Nerdcore Learning go to support a charity that we helped establish called the HOPEConnectsKIDS Research Initiative. A word on that you say? Well, a few years back while doing research at Johns Hopkins, I worked on a pilot study that showed how kids on dialysis could benefit from having access to an online environment where they could meet other kids, game and let out their frustrations with their lot in life. Turned out that seemed to be good for those kids. So we built a charity. Penny Arcade helped for a bit, people were happy and now we’re trying to keep things going by installing internet connected consoles in childrens hospitals around the country. Google HOPE + Arun + Hopkins if you want to find out more because daddy’s typing hands are getting tired. Rock on!