Discoveries made in the research field are unique when you understand them thoroughly, especially in medicine, where we are still discovering new things about human anatomy. However, when the study or findings are published, it often tends to go under the radar. Not because of the research conducted, but then visual appearance of plain text might be a letdown.
It’s where companies like “Tidbit” come to the picture where they convert these broad publications and research papers into illustrative infographics where an ordinary person to an advanced Laurette can understand these publications easily. Venture Mirror had the opportunity to interview Shubham Pandya, the Co – founder of Tidbit and an extensive illustration for the same are provided below.
What is the startup / product / venture about? Give us a brief description of it.
Tidbit offers a software for medical researchers, students and professionals to easily create infographics, or ‘tidbits’, to summarize published research and a social platform for healthcare professionals and students to share and discover these infographics catered to their interests.
Tidbit’s mission is to accelerate the velocity of medical research consumption with a visual form factor that is proven to improve exposure for medical authors by over 800% and increase knowledge retention in readers by 33%.
We are a big believer in Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAMed) and so we are offering the entire platform and software to all users for absolutely free!
Explore, Discover and Create medical visual abstracts at www.tidbitapp.io for free!
How many co-founders are there? Please introduce them and their backgrounds.
Tidbit’s founding team brings a diverse and talented skill set with over 10 years of academic and 20 years of industry experience. With all of the 4 co-founders, Tidbit is poised to grow rapidly and sustainably:
My name is Shubham Pandya and I am Tidbit’s Product Lead. With years of marketing and data analytics experience in telecommunications and financial services in a start-up environment, I bring a wealth of skills that will guide Tidbit’s long term product strategy and profitable growth. Shubham currently leads the Analytics team at Flexiti Financial, one of the fastest growing start-ups in North America.
Sparsh Shah, Strategy Lead. He graduated from the University of Toronto MD/MSc program and is a Resident Physicianin Emergency Medicine. Sparsh also holds an Honors Business Administration (HBA) degree from Ivey. He successfully co-founded two non-profits, served as a medical infographic editor, and published four articles. Sparsh brings a comprehensive understanding of the academic publishing industry, business strategy, and entrepreneurial experience needed to steer Tidbit’s success.
Nilay Shah, Technical Lead. Nilay has an Honors Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of Toronto. Nilay has helped co-found startups which solve problems with various aspects of student life. With previous experience at Wattpad, Nilay is currently employed at Shopify as a senior backend developer. Nilay brings a mixture of technical expertise and a startup mindset to bring our platform to life.
Dhruven Mehta, Operational Lead. Dhruven Mehta is completing his Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Chicago Medical School. He has a Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences from Rosalind Franklin University and Honors Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto. With experience in biomedical and clinical research, and graphic design capabilities, Dhruven will spearhead infographic creation operations.
How did you come up with the idea? What motivated you to do this?
When Sparsh was a fourth year medical student, he watched the ICU convert to a COVID-19 treatment unit and his final weeks were cancelled for safety reasons. He started reading about the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and management of COVID-19, especially knowing that he would be starting residency in Emergency Medicine.
However, he found that the information available was fragmented, long, difficult to digest, and rapidly evolving. With extensive experience designing infographics for FOAMed organizations, he knew that infographics were an untapped content delivery method in science that could solve long-standing issues of knowledge translation.
He reached out to Nilay, Dhruven and myself about this problem/solution paradigm. Our diverse skill sets and passion to provide free and ease of access to education for everyone sparked the idea of launching Tidbit.
Who is your target market? Why do you think your product will appeal to them?
Our primary target market are researchers that publish and read the latest medical research in an effort to stay up to date with the latest developments in medicine. Social media has lowered attention span and caused content consumption to become primarily visual based compared to text.
Tidbits provide vastly more exposure to the author’s published work as sharing on social media becomes effortless with tidbits. In addition, they also result in significant time savings for any healthcare worker looking to stay updated with the developments in their field.
We have been very meticulous in creating a frictionless user experience that makes it so easy to navigate and create beautiful visuals. We have tailored the experience specifically for medical infographics and addressed concerns such as trust and ease of sharing on social media.
We provide all of this for 100% free to maximize the value to the end user!
Who are your competitors? How are you different from them?
To date, there does not exist an infographic centered platform that summarizes research articles. However, there are competitors operating in our space who offer solutions to our selected problem:
Academic Social Media
Top players in this category are Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley. They allow academics to connect, collaborate, and share updates on their research.
Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAMed) Organizations
These are organizations that offer medical education in a free format. Prevalent in Emergency Medicine, they often produce podcasts and blog posts, but more and more of these organizations are developing infographics.
Tidbit provides a centralized place to easily create, discover and share medical infographic content for absolutely free for all users. Tidbit streamlines several practices in the medical research industry such as sharing and consuming veritable content. The single platform experience is unparalleled amongst all the players in this particular category.
What are the future plans with the product/startup? Any new features you are planning on?
We have numerous features that we are currently prototyping and user testing that the entire team is excited to release for all our current and prospective users.
Our team’s headlining product is an automated system that allows near instantaneous creation of tidbits with minimal effort from the user. We are aiming to achieve this by simplifying elements of the visual to a menu from which the user selects their choices and sees changes to the tidbit in real-time. This will drastically reduce development time for users and simplify the creation process significantly.
As we continue to iterate on our features, they will evolve throughout the development process so please stay tuned for further news. We are very excited to share updates on this in the coming months!