About Us

We are second year medical students in the Physician Scientist Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. We are interested in pursuing careers that combine both medical research and clinical practice to provide the highest level of care to our future patients from the bench to the bedside. We are all passionate about medical education, and hope to practice at large academic institutions that offer opportunities to mentor and teach students.

As medical students, we are constantly asked to memorize pages and pages of medical facts in very short periods of time. However, we found that memorizing these facts does not always adequately translate to clinical reasoning skills needed to provide the optimal care for patients. Additionally, as we learn more information about other aspects of medicine, it becomes more difficult to retain previously learned knowledge.

We, along with many of our classmates, specifically struggled with microbiology because of the sheer number of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites that can cause disease (this number is in the hundreds!). By the time we memorized all of the “bugs”, we got lost in the many “drugs” used to treat the infectious diseases.

Bugs vs Drugs reframes our medical education of microbiology into a fun, interactive, clinical scenario driven game to teach students how to approach diagnosing and treating patients presenting with various infectious diseases. This game will provide reinforce material we learned in class in a more clinically applicable manner for longer-term retention. This game will additionally be helpful to people in all levels of training in medicine, pharmacy, nursing, amongst others in healthcare.

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Even though none of us come from computer science backgrounds, in this Hackathon, we actively chose to develop a game. This speaks to our passion of improving medical education, as well as our drive to continually challenge ourselves to learn new skills. As medical professionals, we need to adapt to innovations in technology and expand our skillset to be the best health care providers possible for our future patients.