Med School Dropout and EdTech CEO Relies on Popular Education Platform He Built to Return to School

Shiv Gaglani also launching $10,000 “Osmosis Founder Diffusion & Innovation Prize” to inspire next generation of health education innovators

BALTIMORE, MD, UNITED STATES, April 25, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- After leaving medical school ten years ago with the aim of modernizing medical education, Osmosis.org co-founder & CEO Shiv Gaglani will be relying on the learning platform he built -- now used by millions of students and faculty worldwide -- as he returns to Johns Hopkins University to finish his degree.

Initially a crowdsourced question bank built for Gaglani’s class of 120 fellow medical students, Osmosis.org has developed into a personalized web and mobile education platform with evidence-based videos and tools that enhance learning, organizing, studying, collaborating and teaching.

It currently has more than 3.2 million registered learners around the world and has been adopted by more than 200 health education programs from NYU and Kaiser Permanente’s medical schools, to nursing schools in Australia and Ghana. Gaglani also spearheaded partnerships between Osmosis.org and more than 100 digital health, life science, medical device, health system, and other organizations such as 23andMe, Fresenius, Sanofi, Thrive Global, Coverys, the National Organization for Rare Disorders, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Osmosis.org has YouTube’s most popular health education channel with over 2.75 million subscribers and nearly 300 million video views. "The team at Osmosis are experts at creating videos that make it fun to learn about even complex topics. Their approach to health education is truly making a difference,” said Dr. Garth Graham, Global Head of Healthcare and Public Health Partnerships at YouTube.

Osmosis.org was sparked by a desire to modernize the passive, lecture-based learning environment Gaglani encountered by using more evidence-based education practices -- such as memory anchors, spaced repetition, and use of short-form videos to “flip the classroom” -- and to incorporate the personalized recommendation technology used by Netflix and other media companies into the medical school experience. For example, the Osmosis system analyzes each student’s curriculum, schedule, and performance on low-stakes assessments to recommend relevant videos and practice materials when they need them.

“I first met Shiv at TEDMED a decade ago when he was starting Osmosis.org while a med student at Hopkins,” said Dr. Marc Triola, associate dean for educational informatics, professor of medicine and founding director of the Institute for Innovations in Medical Education at NYU Langone Health. “It's an amazing full-circle accomplishment because our program at NYU has fully adopted and benefitted from the platform he built to deliver personalized and enjoyable learning. I’m excited to see how he continues to grow Osmosis.org and other initiatives as he returns to medical school.”

After recruiting the team that ran Khan Academy Health & Medicine, Gaglani raised millions of dollars in venture capital funding from prominent investors including Alan Patricof (APAX, Greycroft, Primetime Partners) and Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) to build Osmosis.org into one of the largest health education libraries of more than 2,000 short educational videos used by students, clinicians, patients and their family members covering everything from how to place an intravenous line to the causes, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of hundreds of common and rare diseases.

Osmosis.org was acquired in late 2021 by the 140-year-old multi-billion-dollar global publisher Elsevier (known for Gray’s Anatomy and The Lancet among other titles), leading to a successful outcome for Osmosis.org’s teammates, investors, and other shareholders. Since the acquisition, Osmosis.org from Elsevier has continued to grow by forging dozens of new partnerships with universities, health systems, and life science companies around the world; releasing localized Spanish and Australian versions of the platform; and launching a major initiative to raise awareness and education of rare disorders called “The Year of the Zebra,” among other milestones.

Gaglani, now 34, is currently enrolled in a medical student elective focused on artificial intelligence, and begins clinical rotations in May. “Even though I was committed to building Osmosis.org, I never gave up the dream of becoming a physician,” said Gaglani, who immigrated to the U.S. from Africa when he was a young child. “One of the most exciting things about going back to med school is I'm relying on Osmosis as my primary resource. In fact, I'm betting my medical degree on it.”

In celebration of the impact of Osmosis.org on global health education, Gaglani is personally funding and launching the $10,000 Osmosis Founder Diffusion & Innovation Prize. Applications will open in late April 2023 with a deadline of July 31 (https://ganglia.co/#prize).

“The goal of the prize is two-fold: to both help more students, healthcare professionals, patients, and others around the world ‘learn by Osmosis’ and to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators to further improve the way we train current and future clinicians as well as engage with and empower patients,” he said.

About Shiv Gaglani
Shiv Gaglani’s passion is developing innovative and scalable solutions in the fields of healthcare, education, and human flourishing. He was born to Indian parents in Namibia where his father was practicing as a doctor, moving to the U.S. when he was six. His intense interest in education and technology led to him developing the “Smartphone Physical” and “The Patient Promise” in 2013 while a med student; a 2019 TEDx talk entitled “Can you get an MD online?; the Annals of Internal Medicine article “What can medical education learn from Facebook and Netflix?; and founding Osmosis.org. Shiv is also an avid writer who has authored two educational books, Success with Science and Standing out on the SAT & ACT. His work has been featured in the BBC, USA Today, Fast Company, Quartz, Entrepreneur, and Forbes, which named him to its 30 Under 30 List in 2018. Shiv is also founder and managing partner of Ganglia Ventures. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 2010 after which he began his MD degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2016.

Michael Carrese
Ganglia Ventures
connect@ganglia.co