Dr. Chilman-Blair, founder and President of Medicine X,  brought together the world’s best storytellers, world renowned artists and skilled doctors to create digital stories explaining complicated medical conditions in an animated and understandable format. All medicine ‘xplained’ stories are based on real patients, who describe their journey with a complicated condition—the normal anatomy and physiology, pathophysiology, symptoms, investigations, treatments and how to become involved in clinical trials. 

In addition to the digital stories, over 170 Facebook support groups have been formed for patients to ask Medicine X in house doctors medical questions about their specific medical affliction.   

Dr. Chilman-Blair joins me today to discuss her background and how her daily efforts to help patients understand their diagnosis led her to creating Medicine X. She shares with us the metamorphosis from Medikids to Medicine X. She explains how she structures her trials and how she is scaling the company to different diagnoses and different regions. 

Her career began with a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacology, followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Pharmacology and Psychological Medicine. Throughout her undergraduate studies, Dr. Chilman-Blair trained and worked as a freelance academic medical writer and editor, writing both for medical journals, and as an international medical journalist. She then undertook a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree at Otago Medical School to become a clinical doctor.  During her years as a junior doctor, Dr. Chilman-Blair also studied a Masters in Entrepreneurship through the Otago Business School. 

After two years as a house surgeon, Dr. Chilman-Blair left her clinical job to create Medikidz—an initiative dedicated to explaining complex medical information to children through comic books.  After seven years as Founder and CEO of Medikidz, Dr. Chilman-Blair left to start up a new initiative to explain medical information to all patients regardless of age, condition, gender or ethnicity—Medicine X: (ie Medicine Xplained by doctors, for patients)—of which she is currently the Founder and President. 

“Now more than ever, patients are needing to be able to access information they can understand from in a digital way and not have to leave the house if they don't have to. So I think that we have been lucky enough to be able to keep continue to serve people in this way. So this year, it's it's tricky because it's hard for anybody to really be able to plan for anything. We know that life will probably not go back to anywhere normal as we know, until at least September, in terms of just you know, travel and things. So we're really just focusing on innovation and growing, what we can provide to patients.” 

- Dr. Chilman-Blair

Today on When She Founded:

• How comic books play a role in her company’s story
• Her move from patient care to the business side 
• The approach to funding
• The evolution of her business model
• How the pandemic has impacted her business
• How serving the community translates into revenue

Connect with Dr. Chilman-Blair on LinkedIn or the website of Medicine X

The link for the interview with vaccine legend Moncef Slaoui about the upcoming COVID vaccine/s at the White House. To view Interview. Click here

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