ENTREPRENEUR SPOTLIGHT
Yasyf Mohamedali Brings Patients and Doctors Together
Unlike many members of his family, Yasyf Mohamedali didn’t go to medical school. Even as a teenager, he was far more interested in technology and entrepreneurship. In fact, he launched his first business while in high school, reselling domain names for websites. While attending MIT, Mohamedali found a way to leave his mark on the medical field too. It all started with Joe Kahn, a Harvard student from South Africa who suffered from an undiagnosed medical condition. This unnamed illness caused the young student to have bouts of high fever, diarrhea, and vomiting. Worse still, Kahn was unable to get clear answers from doctors and was often sent from one specialist to the next without so much as a follow-up appointment. Kahn’s struggles navigating the health care system, despite having access to some of the best medical facilities in the United For most of human history, surgery was seen as a necessary torture. Prior to anesthesia, surgery was an agonizing experience for patients and surgeons alike. While surgeons suffered from emotional trauma, patients were likely to die from the shock of surgery. As surgery was often the only chance to save a patient, doctors and surgeons have tried many methods for making the experience less traumatic — to varying degrees of success. sedation dissociative method of anesthesia. Prior to surgery, the patient would be given powdered opium mixed with draft wine. When opium was unavailable, powdered mandrake and powdered corn poppy were popular alternatives. Roman surgeons also experimented with local anesthesia, smearing the operation site with a mixture of mephitic stone and henbane seeds. Powdered Mandrake (Ancient Rome) Roman anesthesiologists relied on the
States, made Mohamedali realize just how unique his own access to care had been.
Growing up as the son of two physicians in rural Canada, Mohamedali never struggled to get medical advice at a moment’s notice. “Whenever I got sick, I just called a doctor in my family,” he explained in a 2018 interviewwith the MIT Alumni Association. “I want people like Joe to have that kind of relationship with their care.” So, the two university students founded Karuna Health. This online platform helps doctors keep in contact with their patients, track their progress, and coordinate treatment with other care providers. Leveraging his experience in the tech field, Mohamedali designed Karuna to integrate digital medical records with patient- preferred means of communication, from SMS to WhatsApp — all without breaching the strict Hua Tuo’s Mafeisan (China, A.D. 200) If you needed surgery in the ancient world, China was where you wanted to be. In A.D. 200, the legendary Chinese physician Hua Tuo was performing surgeries using a mixture he called “mafeisan.” This ancient anesthesia could induce unconsciousness and partially block neuromuscular transmissions. Thanks to his mafeisan, Hua Tuo was performing successful appendectomies. Unfortunately, the formula was lost when Hua Tuo burned all his writings shortly before his death. Coca Leaves (South America, A.D. 1500) Skull surgery was all the rage in the Inca empire of South America. Trepanation was a common practice among the Incans, which meant they needed a reliable painkiller. Incan doctors chewed coca leaves mixed with vegetable ash and applied the cocaine solution to their patients’ wounds.
HIPAA privacy regulations. This way, users can make appointments, send automatic reminders for medication refills, and hear from patients at a moment’s notice. Karuna, which means “compassion” in Sanskrit, is poised to bring doctors and patients closer together and keep people from slipping through the cracks in the health care industry. According to Inc.com, the startup has already raised $1.3 million from investors. It looks like Mohamedali is well on his way to making health care more accessible for all.
HOLY GRAIL OF SURGERY
What DidWe Do Before Anesthesia?
Effective anesthesia was the holy grail of surgery, and the quest was finally achieved in 1846. When a dentist named Dr. William Morton demonstrated how he could use sulfuric ether to painlessly remove a patient’s tumor, he changed the world. Today, anesthesia is a vast field that continues to evolve. Needless to say, modern anesthesia is far more effective than wine and powdered mandrake.
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