Reflecting on Year One and Beyond

Hey there, MedEdMentor community!

Can you believe it's been a year already?

In September 2023, we launched MedEdMentor with a big dream: to be your AI mentor for health professions education (HPE) scholarship.

What a year it's been! Aside from simplifying our capitalization to "MedEdMentor," let's take a moment to celebrate some other awesome milestones:

• 1800 users from over 100 countries joined the MedEdMentor community
• We developed the only HPE-specific literature search, and we've served over 6000 queries
• Our first AI tool, the Theory Suggester, has been used over 1000 times
• We created the first HPE-specific custom GPT on ChatGPT
• 13 lessons were published to help you navigate the world of HPE and AI
• MedEdMentor was an AMEE 2024 Patil Teaching Innovation Award Finalist (!)

But here's something really cool — when we started, the vast majority of our users were from the United States.

Now?

This shift is exactly what we hoped for when we started this journey. It affirms that solid HPE mentorship is needed all over the world, especially in the Global South.

We've known for a while that scholars from the Global South often face hurdles in getting their work published in well-known journals. For example, here's a slide from our AMEE 2024 presentation, using the data from this paper which outlines the number and proportion of accepted manuscripts by country for the journal Medical Education.

Outside of the top 5 countries, the rest of the world put together ranks #6. This is a massive disparity, and we believe MedEdMentor can help level this playing field.

This first year has really helped us nail down what MedEdMentor is all about. We're expanding our mission from just building an AI mentor.

Now, our mission is to promote universal HPE scholarship by harnessing AI to provide guidance and foster global collaboration.

Universal HPE scholarship means:

1. Universal participation — HPE scholarship should be abundant, equitable, and represent a diversity of populations and voices.
2. Universal guidance — guidance and mentorship should be available regardless of institutional resources or geography
3. Universal use of theories — theories and paradigms should not be limited only to what you and your mentor can come up with. You should be able to systematically wield all the theories in HPE.

This mission means that we're still working on our AI mentor (the "to provide guidance" part), but it also means that we'll be working on ways to bring diverse scholars together (the "global collaboration" part).

The mission also means that MedEdMentor is here for everyone — no matter your primary language, nationality, institution, career stage, worldview, or economic status. We're building resources that are accessible to everyone, reflect different (and often marginalized) approaches, and that meet you where you're at in your HPE journey.

We're dreaming big. We believe promoting universal HPE scholarship will create real downstream benefits.

Picture this future with us:

• AI-powered mentorship makes expert guidance in HPE scholarship available to everyone
• A vibrant global community of HPE scholars collaborates seamlessly on international projects, bringing multiple perspectives to every challenge
• Enhanced HPE scholarship leads to improvements in health professions education across all disciplines
• Ultimately, this evolution in education translates to better patient care worldwide, bridging gaps in healthcare quality and access

We've designed MedEdMentor to mimic the key roles that human mentors play. Here's how we've mapped it out so far:

But we're not stopping here!

We've been hard at work for almost a year on a fundamental upgrade to the literature search. It's been a ton of work but the final product will form the foundation for all kinds of features on MedEdMentor and have broader impacts in HPE. We're working on making it truly excellent before we release it.

If you've enjoyed what we've done so far, trust us — you're going to love what's coming. And if our mission and vision resonate with you, there'll be plenty of opportunities to get involved and help out. Stay tuned for specific calls, or reach out if you're itching to support MedEdMentor.

Finally, we want to give a massive shout-out to all our users from around the world. Your interest, enthusiasm, and support show us we're on the right track.

We have one small ask: if you know anyone engaged in HPE, please share MedEdMentor with them. The more users we have, the more we learn about what you like, and the better we can tailor our content and resources to your needs.

So, thank you for an amazing first year. Here's to many more to come!