The Dermatology Interest Group (DIG) has worked with Dr. Eliot Mostow (NEOMED Chair of Dermatology), Dr. Erica Stovsky (Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine), and Mr. Simon Robins (NEOMED Librarian) to gain access to an award-winning diagnostic clinical decision support system: VisualDx. With the help of a generous donation, NEOMED purchased a 1-year subscription until December 31st for all College of Medicine students. This software is renowned for one of the world’s best curated medical image libraries, a smart search for chief complaints and drug reactions, and a custom patient-specific differential diagnosis builder. It is used by hospitals and clinics around the world and contains information from many medical specialties.
One of the additional major benefits of this software is a skin-of-color atlas. At NEOMED, we fight to address racial disparities in medicine, including an underrepresentation of textbook images demonstrating manifestations of diseases in people of color. This software helps us tackle that disparity by allowing access to a vast library of images of disease presentations, specific to people of color.
From the classroom to the wards, this tool can be of great benefit to students. Preclinical students can benefit by supplementing class material with the software and applying it toward relevant clinical content. Rotating students can use VisualDx to help reduce diagnostic errors by augmenting a clinician’s point of view. In the near future, we also aim to expand VisualDx access to all Colleges at NEOMED.
For assistance with your login, please contact srobins@neomed.edu.
-Submitted by Rachel Krevh