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Doctor's digest

Bengaluru-based Omnicuris is the online tutor for practising medical professionals

Savitha Kuttan had returned to India in 2009 after spending about 11 years as a healthcare consultant in the US and Europe. She was here to set up a strategy for a multinational pharmaceutical company. That was when she realised how the medical education scenario in India was strikingly different from that in the West. Continuous medical education (CME) is a mandatory requirement enforced by medical councils to ensure that the doctors are on par with the latest advancements in the field. But to earn the CME credits and to upgrade themselves with the latest knowledge and skillsets, doctors in India had only two ways. They could either attend the long conferences conducted by the Medical Council of India, or rely on information from pharma companies. The conferences took away a large chunk of time from their busy schedules and in return provided miniscule portions of relevant information, whereas information that pharma companies provided was perceived to be biased. The inefficient and non-targeted means of education left a gaping hole for an independent medical education enterprise.