The vision and courage of the Afghan-Canadian physician-entrepreneur Dr Karim Quyami, founder and CEO of CyberPatient, really shine through in this attentive interview by Alex Kinsella. The good doctor’s project, a VR training product for new doctors, lets caregivers make the crucial mistakes all skill-acquisition requires, without real-world casualties.
Read Alex Kinsella and Dr Karim Quyani on the scaling problem in medical training.
“The journey of Dr. Qayumi and CyberPatient began in Dr. Qayumi’s native Afghanistan during the time of Soviet occupation. Honing his medical skills during the occupation and war, he started to create what would become CyberPatient. “I was the head of a department in Afghanistan and I would have done that forever,” he remembers.
But it wasn’t until he and his family left for Canada that things came together to make CyberPatient a reality. After arriving in Canada, he found opportunities to grow as a physician, educator and entrepreneur. “As an Afghan physician, not knowing English – it was a difficult job,” he says.
CyberPatient launched late last year and they already have contracts with four major medical schools. “It’s been overwhelming. We keep hearing ‘Yes, I want this now.’”
The “experience gap” Dr Quyami discusses, when you think about it, is a clear problem in numerous fields of endeavour -- wherever the learning curve is steep and the stakes are high. It’s a niche VR technologies might have been born to fill.
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