I’m a practicing Emergency Physician and recently joined GIBLIB as Chief Medical Officer. I wanted to reach out directly and send you an update to make sure we’re on the right path to making GIBLIB perfect for my fellow medical providers.

A little of my story…

Out of residency, I was proud to continue learning. I read every book and journal, listened to every podcast, watched every video I could find, joined every organization, and went to every conference. But then life caught up to me. Every organization, hospital, and agency had different things they wanted, NEEDED, me to learn. It seemed like everyone had a lecture, newsletter, podcast, conference. The firehose of knowledge in medical school was nothing compared to the CME tidal wave. 

I was wasting time searching, traveling, reading, and listening. I would spend hours in conference lectures or listen to a 3.5-hour podcast to learn only 1-2 new things. Add to this the increasing demands – more patients, less time, more documentation, CMS measures, reporting requirements, and it wasn’t fun anymore. I have a confession to make – for a while, I just stopped. I canceled the memberships, stopped getting the journals, stopped listening to the podcasts, stopped searching for videos. 

The question became (and remains): how can I rekindle that passion for learning to stay the excellent physician my patients deserve?

That brings me to GIBLIB. As a member, you already see how we’re working on solving that problem. However, we realize there have been (and continue to be) growing pains. So first of all, THANK YOU. Thank you for seeing the utility and potential despite those growing pains. As a thank you, we’re going to be rewarding our legacy users (more to come, just keep reading). 

GIBLIB has been built to provide one validated, comprehensive source to find, explore, discover, and learn from an ever-expanding library in the most beautiful and engaging way possible. If you want or need to learn something, your subscription enables you to easily find high-quality, curated content from validated sources. If you haven’t really played with version 4.0 yet, you should. We spent the last year improving search, so you can search entire transcripts (and jump to any point in that video by clicking a word in the transcript) to get you straight to the information you need. And, unlike some other sources of medical content, we don’t just allow anyone to post requiring you to fact check your education; we partner with only the top institutions to provide validated content.

GIBLIB also gives you access to more than just your specialty. You get to see how people outside your specialty are thinking about the delivery of medicine. I once volunteered in Uganda. Every morning, all the hospital physicians would share a refreshing milk tea together. Whereas, back in America, I hardly ever saw any of the other physicians who cared for a patient. Think about it: when was the last time you really communicated with all the other providers who take care of your patients? Isn’t it annoying? 

The morning milk tea experience translated for me into practice comparisons, shared stories and cases, and ultimately made us better physicians. Don’t you wish you had that medical community experience? I want to recreate this experience with GIBLIB. I want you to learn not just from your specialty, but from the entire community of medicine.

“SOOOOOOOOOO, WHAT?” you’re thinking. Omeed, stop telling me what I know and tell me what you’re going to do to make my learning experience awesome. 

Here is the plan for 2022:

• Pricing. As a thank you, we’re going to introduce a legacy payment schedule. The longer you’re a member, the cheaper it will be. Significantly cheaper. If your membership is expiring before the official rollout – please just email support@giblib.com.

• iOS app. We’re building an iPhone app with all the bells and whistles of our desktop platform, plus the ability to download content, so you can play videos in the background to better fit our on-the-go lifestyle.

• Written Pearls. Every new video will soon come with a brief outline of pearls you can skim to get you to information faster.

• Video Pearls. We will continue to provide the full-length videos you’ve come to expect. But we will also be producing more digestible, short versions of the things you are most excited to learn.

• Relevant and entertaining content. We started testing COVID content this year, and it is obvious you want material that is up-to-date, relevant, and entertaining. We will be bringing more short videocasts, ask-the-expert series, panel debates, and similar content next year.

• Continued improvements in video browse functionality. You’ll soon be able to browse and filter beyond just your specialty, but by content type (powerpoint, video, audio-only), anatomy,  subject matter, and more.

• Those annoying audio-only, copyright-protected lectures will be more clearly delineated and made into downloadable podcasts for on-the-go learning.

• More focused stand-alone courses on timely topics such as physician burnout and the business of medicine.

• Less and better emails. None of us need more emails. We are going to cut the number of emails you get in half and focus on just recommending the things you will be interested in watching.

• More content subjects and partners. We are adding a list of new academic hospital partners, new specialties, and new material next year. If you asked for a specific topic, we are likely already planning to film it.

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My only ask of you for 2022 – please don’t hesitate to help us improve. 

Send support@giblib.com an email and tell us Are we on the right track? What else can GIBLIB do to be your favorite place to learn?

Thanks again,

Happy Holidays,

Omeed

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