CanadiEM - By Becky Jones - June 4, 2020
"The Necessity For Knowledge
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed how physicians practice medicine worldwide and has created a wide information gap as clinicians struggle to integrate the immense volume of new research into their practice. Primary literature of varying quality is being published at an accelerated pace, and the lack of strong evidence for diagnostics, treatments, and interventions only further contributes to this uncertainty.
Dr. Mark Crowther, Chair of the Department of Medicine at McMaster University, identified the need for a resource to fill this knowledge gap for frontline clinicians and researchers. Becky Jones, a medical student at McMaster, connected with Dr. Crowther to spearhead the project and subsequently recruited fellow medical students Meghan Glibbery, Hannah Kearney, and Daniel Levin to aid with project coordination and publication review. They were joined by Jasper Ho, another medical student with expertise in programming and website design. Due to the overwhelming volume of literature published daily, four additional medical students were recruited to assist with publication review (Jillian Howden, Maya Amar, Sara Markovic, John Kim)..."