Collaboration with Students on Expert Masterclass Interviews
Contribute to medical expert masterclass interviews and gain unique resume-worthy experience, top MD connections, and personal brand visibility.
1. Benefits for you as a student:
Acceptance rates at top-10 U.S. medical schools range from 1.4% to 4.9%. The majority of applicants with a realistic chance of acceptance have similarly high GPAs and MCAT scores.
If you are already a medical student, you know well that matching to a competitive residency program at a top hospital is also very competitive.
You need a unique differentiator to make your application memorable and stand out among hundreds of candidates with comparable backgrounds.
Outcome:
- Your presence will be featured in multiple segments of each masterclass.
- Even asking just 2–4 questions per session can lead to 20–40 video segments featuring you across different masterclasses.
- You will appear alongside world-renowned medical experts and resident/fellow physicians from top academic institutions.
This is a standout addition to your resume and an excellent way to establish and build your personal brand in medicine.
Mentorship has a profound impact on professional success in medicine. Many successful mentorships begin early in one’s career. However, finding the right mentor requires building a broad network of professional contacts.
The same applies to internships and research opportunities - both are key differentiators in a competitive medical school or residency program application.
By contributing to masterclass creation, you develop meaningful connections with:
- MDs in the rising phase of their careers
- World-renowned medical experts
These relationships may naturally evolve into mentorships, internships, or research collaborations - all of which can shape your future path in medicine.
Mentorship shapes careers in medicine and surgery. Here’s what top experts say about it:
https://diagnosticdetectives.com/products/what-motivates-a-leading-cancer-surgeon-in-life-10
Today, personal branding, media exposure and communication skills are must-haves in medicine.
The era of physicians working solely in academic ivory tower silos, talking to and writing for the peers, and issuing one-way directives to passive patients* is over.
By contributing to the development of a masterclass:
- You will have the opportunity to ask several questions during the interview with a world-renowned expert.
- These moments will be featured in the final video segments, placing you alongside leading physicians on a global stage.
You’ll also get a dedicated profile page that features all your interview segments. This is perfect for including on your resume or in networking communications.
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*Note: The meaning of “patient” in modern medicine evolves.
The word patient originates from the Latin noun patiens, the present participle of patior, meaning “to suffer,” “to endure,” or “to undergo.”
In classical Latin, it described someone experiencing hardship or bearing a burden.
The term was later adopted into Middle English via Old French (patient), still conveying the sense of a person enduring illness or treatment.
For centuries, this passive connotation has shaped the traditional view of the physician–patient relationship.
However, there has been longstanding debate in the medical community about whether the term “patient” is still appropriate in the context of modern healthcare.
See: “Do we need a new word for patients?” – BMJ, 1999
Today, it is clear that physician–patient relationships increasingly rely on active collaboration and shared decision-making:
That said, these dynamics are not universal. The role of patients—and their level of engagement—varies significantly across cultures:
Note: For technical and logistical ease, your questions will be pre-recorded and inserted into the video during post-production (unless you are available for the entire live interview with an expert). See below for more details.
2. Scope and audience for our masterclasses
As outlined in our raison d’être, masterclasses are designed in total to reflect 80% of the insights a patient would receive in a one-on-one consultation with a top specialist.
This model addresses a global gap:
- Most patients don’t have access to world-class experts.
- But medical knowledge is scalable—and the 80/20 rule applies: ~80% of information is broadly relevant to patients with the same disease subtype and stage.
- By interviewing multiple experts per condition, we provide diverse perspectives and deeper understanding.
All masterclasses are freely accessible worldwide, ad-free, and unaffiliated with hospitals or companies. Additionally, we plan to offer dubbed versions in multiple languages.
We aim for three outcomes:
- Empower patients with accurate, in-depth knowledge.
- Raise expectations for quality of care.
- Improve treatment adherence through better understanding.
Primary care physicians are also a potential audience, especially for in-depth subspecialty content.
All masterclasses are freely accessible worldwide, ad-free, and unaffiliated with hospitals or companies. Additionally, we plan to offer dubbed versions in multiple languages.
Public Health Impact:
- Educating Patients:
By delivering accurate, expert-driven information, we help patients better understand critical aspects of their diagnosis and empower them to ask more informed questions.
Patients often get sidetracked by unreliable online content or anecdotal advice, which leads them to focus on irrelevant or misleading details. Our expert opinion experience confirms this trend.
2. Improving Care Locally:
Watch patterns reveal that once users discover our masterclasses, they typically view 20-30 videos in rapid succession.
While personalized consultations remain essential, well-informed patients are better equipped to engage meaningfully with their physicians, ultimately leading to better care and attention.
Our masterclass interviews aim to comprehensively cover all major diagnoses through in-depth discussions with approximately 10 leading experts per diagnosis. Currently:
- There are roughly 800 Diagnosis-Related Groups* (DRGs).
- The WHO Classification of Tumors** identifies about 300 tumor types (some overlap with DRGs).
Our goal is to produce a cluster of video masterclasses for each DRG and tumor type.
Collectively, these videos are designed to cover 80% of what a patient would typically learn in a one-on-one consultation with a high-quality specialist.
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* Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs)
Diagnosis-Related Groups, or DRGs, are classifications that group together similar or closely related diagnoses and the procedures commonly associated with them.
There are approximately 770 to 999 DRGs, depending on the classification method used.
See: What is a DRG? – Wikipedia
The top 10 DRGs account for nearly 30% of all acute hospital admissions.
This highlights how a relatively small number of diagnostic categories cover a significant portion of inpatient care.
The full list of DRGs is publicly available and organized by organ system under Major Diagnostic Categories (MDCs):
See: https://www.cms.gov/icd10m/version39-fullcode-cms/fullcode_cms/P0001.html
** WHO Classification of Tumors
Oncology is, unsurprisingly, one of the most sought-after areas of information for patients worldwide.
The WHO Classification of Tumors offers a globally recognized, structured system for categorizing tumors by organ system and tumor type.
This framework serves as a valuable resource for both clinicians and researchers—and a practical guide for developing expert masterclasses in oncology.
The Tables of Contents (TOCs) in the books by IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) list tumors by category. They are publicly accessible:
See: Access WHO Classification of Tumors – IARC Publications
3. How can you get involved?
1.1. You can identify Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs) or tumors aligned with your interest. DRG list and WHO Classification of Tumors are publicly available.
1.2. You can then identify the top 20+ experts worldwide in that diagnostic group. Use an efficient method and algorithm for identifying leading medical experts (see below).
1.3. Once you create a list of 20+ experts, we can review them together and then you can send out a brief email to enquire about their willingness to do an online masterclass video interview that reflects their research and clinical interests. You can put yours and my name on the emails. I have an email template.
If you are too shy, I can do it, and include your name in the text, so your name recognition starts right away.
2.1. You can participate in creating expert masterclasses in several large areas of medicine and surgery.
For example, oncology and cardiology are huge areas with plenty of subspecialties.
Basic molecular biology and immunology can be applied to many clinical areas, so you can start from the basic science and see where it can be applied.
2.2. We can discus and select 2-3 areas of medicine or surgery, and I will then send you a list of experts to start working on the “downstream” tasks (outlined further below).
3.1. For each expert who agrees (the positive response rate is high on average but difficult to anticipate), you then take a look at that expert’s published papers and biography.
3.2. With a help of several AI LLMs you then create a “master list” of around 50 questions that reflect experts published work.
You use several LLMs because you will immediately see that all will create a group of similar questions (confirming an expert’s major focus) but each LLM will also return a few unique questions.
I have the prompts that worked well, and the algorithm to make this efficient (your improvements to the process are always welcome!)
3.3. This master question list is then sent to the expert and also to a resident- or fellow-level physician who will be driving the interview.
They are domain experts and they will curate the question list. A number of questions to be asked also depends on expert’s willingness and availability. So not all 50 questions might be asked during live interview recording.
3.4. You are welcome to take an initiative to communicate with a resident or fellow and with experts during preparation of the interview.
We have templated emails for you to use as a starting point.
But if you feel shy or overwhelmed by your college life, you do not have to directly communicate with experts and fellows. It is up to you how much of an initiative you are willing to take. We can handle the logistics on our own.
Thus, in the process of this work, you establish connections with leading medical experts in a given field and with one or more residents or fellows from a top academic hospital. This can serve well in your future career.
You’ll also have the opportunity to ask the expert questions from the list you’ve prepared. There are two ways to do this:
1. Live Participation:
You can join the live interview session and pose your questions directly. However, this requires aligning your availability with both the expert and the resident/fellow conducting the interview. That may be challenging given everyone’s schedules.
2. Pre-Recorded Questions:
A more practical option is to pre-record short videos of yourself asking each question (using the same web app we use for the live interviews).
During live interview a fellow- or resident-level physician will introduce your question as if you were asking it.
In post-production we will replace that segment with your video asking that question. In this way in a completed masterclass it will be you who asks this question on video.
This way, in the final masterclass, it will appear as if you are conversing directly with the expert.
So the end product would be a segment of the masterclass interview where you are talking to the expert, which will put you on a map.
Even if you ask 2-3-4 questions during each masterclass, it will be 20-30-40 video segments with your participation across a cluster of masterclasses on a given diagnosis.
You will be surrounded by leading medical experts from around the world and by residents and fellows rising up at top academic institutions.
This will be a unique line on your resume, and will get you started on building a personal brand in medicine, an already important quality, which is likely to be further increasing in importance in the future.
World’s leading medical experts will also become aware of you and will interact with you.
These are useful connections to have, and, may result in practical experience opportunities, internships, discussions etc.
All leading experts greatly value the mentorship they received at the start of their path, and would very much like to pass the torch to the next generation.
Preparing and participating in expert masterclass interviews is an excellent opportunity to potentially be mentored by some of the greatest minds in medicine and surgery, worldwide.
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