Happy New Year

Dear Friend,

As we bid farewell to the challenges of the past year, I wanted to take a moment to extend my warmest wishes to each and every one of you. Happy New Year!

As 2023 drew to an end, it was a great time to reflect on my journey of creating In2Med, and what the plans are for 2024 and beyond. Since In2Med started in 2020, its amazing to see that so many of you have signed up use my content, including my medicine notes, courses, seen my videos etc. Some of you even reached out to join the team and help make In2Med what it is today – a free portal for medical students all over the world. 

To begin 2024, I thought it would be a good time to share with you the story of how In2Med started, and who I am. Having spent the past 3 years building up the website and writing all the content, it’s taken me a long while to get to the point where I am finally content with the website. If you’re interested in reading about how it started, feel free to continue reading below. 

From now on, I’ll be sending a weekly newsletter with some highlights of the week in my life as a junior doctor. I’ll also throw in a teaser MCQ so you can test your medical knowledge and for those of you who like the snippets of medical knowledge, I’ve also included a section on Drug of the week.  

I hope you find my content useful, and stick around for what promises to be a fun and educational year ahead. 

The In2Med Story

My In2Med journey started back in 2020 when I was a medical student at the University of Cambridge. When the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown happened, we (medical students) were sent home from medical school for about 6 months.

I had always enjoyed writing my own notes to study – as I had a lot of time on my hands, I decided to upload my notes online and create a website, teaching myself how to code using YouTube videos. I opened up 300 places for students to test my notes so that I could get some feedback.

Within 48 hours, the places were all filled, and I found out that medical students all around the country were using my notes. The next part is where it gets exciting. 

When I returned to medical school, I pitched my website to the Cambridge Judge Business School and was accepted into their Accelerate Business Incubator programme. It was here where I learnt how to set up a company and how a business works.

My break came when I was awarded funding from Santander Universities. This allowed me to develop the website further and recruit medical students from universities around the UK to develop more medical resources and the website further. 

It’s amazing how multi-skilled medical students are. We had students helping with course creation, video editing, graphic designing, promotion and much more.

By the time I graduated in 2021, In2Med was being used by over 1000 medical students on a weekly basis, with a mailing list of over 2000 students. We had developed 10 courses, and a host of free content for medical students. 

I’m now working as a medical trainee in London, hoping to specialise in oncology. Balancing In2Med alongside working as a full time junior doctor is not easy, but I don’t know what I’d do without it. After a busy shift on the wards, sometimes it’s nice to sit with my laptop and a coffee and write medical notes, especially if someone might benefit from them.

Drug of the week

Lubiprostone

This is a new class of laxative derived from prostaglandin E1.

It acts by specifically activating ClC-2 chloride channels on the apical aspect of gastrointestinal epithelial cells.

This helps to produce a chloride-rich fluid secretion which softens stool.

It is used to treat chronic constipation in adults and irritable bowel syndrome associated with constipation in women.

For more pharmacology notes, check out the updated pharmacology section on In2Med.