A UCF student co-founded a medical networking site that will give students education and career opportunities.
WeMedUp was started just a few weeks ago by Pre-Med Sophomore Elias Davis and Dr. Moises Fraifeld, a physician that he shadowed for a year and a half. Dr. Fraifeld is a general and interventional cardiologist at the Florida Hospital Waterman and has his own private practice called Cardiovascular Associates.
“It’s a social network that will benefit UCF students,” Davis said. “One of the biggest benefits students will have from utilizing WeMedUp is the chance to grow their network of contacts. They will now have the opportunity to reach out to physicians, various health care providers and other students and connect with them. They will establish relationships that will result in shadowing and research opportunities, as well as obtaining a mentor that will guide them through the process of becoming health professionals themselves.”
Dr. Fraifeld believed that there was a need to improve communication between health care professionals and students. Dr. Fraifeld said WeMedUp was made to improve this communication and will allow students to get in touch with physicians and other health care providers in an easy manner.
“We had the idea that we needed to do something to improve communication with physicians, health care providers and students, in a way that everybody can collaborate, teach, and share ideas. There appeared to be a need for communication between physicians and health care providers from different locations and students from different cities,” Dr. Fraifeld said.
There are an endless amount of opportunities that WeMedUp has to offer said Dr. Fraifeld. Students will be able to get in touch with physicians and other health care providers and these health care providers will have the chance to teach students about various things. Students will also be able to share cases and ideas with other students not only from their university but from other universities as well because the site is international said Dr. Fraifeld.
“I think that there’s a need for physicians and healthcare providers that do not have the opportunity to teach, to be able to reach students and share information with them,” Dr. Fraifeld said. “A student will be able to choose and pick whoever they want to talk to from their directory and if they want to shadow someone they can ask easily. If they want to have more learning opportunities they can ask questions or if they have any issues in medical school, maybe there’s someone that can help them within the website.”
Some students such as Shiri Zweibel, a junior majoring in communication sciences and disorders, have already begun to take advantage of the opportunities that are possible through WeMedUp. Zweibel liked the idea of being able to get to know the speech pathologists in the Orlando area, as well as them getting to know her from her profile first.
“I connected with a speech pathologist in Orlando and I am currently trying to find a time to intern with them,” Zweibel said.
Ross Hartman, a health science pre-clinical UCF student, said he would personally like to get some type of internship through WeMedUp. He is specifically looking to connect with someone in organic holistic medicines and believes the site will greatly help him. Hartman compared WeMedUp to other social networking sites and said that it’s a way to keep people connected and open up possibilities for students.
“It’s a great informative tool for students in any type of science major at colleges to connect them with any allied health professionals, medical professionals, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Also, it provides a platform where students can acquire academic or professional assistance as well as guidance through career oriented decisions,” Hartman said.
WeMedUp plans to reach out to all of the medical organizations on campus to try and get them involved in the opportunities that the site has to offer. They accomplished their first step in doing this on October 9 by partnering up with Pre-Student Osteopathic Medical Association.
“We’re the first organization at UCF to partner up with them,” treasurer of Pre-SOMA Richard Henriquez said. “The reason why we decided to partner up with them is because we actually do believe that WeMedUp has amazing potential and it’s the future of healthcare. Since our healthcare is changing so is our technology and so is our networking capabilities so by pairing up we can use WeMedUp in a way to educate the students so they can meet more doctors.”
Now that Pre-SOMA has partnered up with WeMedUp the club will have a group on the site just for their members. Pre-SOMA plans to use the site as their main source of communication. All of their events, activities, newsletters, shadowing opportunities and information for their big-little program will now be posted in the group on the WeMedUp site.
“Ultimately we’re a team,” Henriquez said. “We’re supposed to be a team and were trying to advocate that and that’s what WeMedUp is about and we love that idea because it follows the Pre-SOMA philosophy where were a team and we work together. It gives our members another outlet to find doctors that they can shadow and that they can meet.”
Henriquez was also recently hired by WeMedUp to be an ambassador at UCF. WeMedUp is currently hiring more ambassadors to market and advertise for the company on various campuses. As of right now the company has one student ambassador at UCF, one at the University of Florida, one at Broward College, and a graduate student that currently lives in south Florida marketing for the Universities in that area.
“One of the things we started doing is we sent out an advertisement because we are hiring what we call campus ambassadors,” Davis said. “The campus ambassador is someone that we’d hire that would be interested in joining our team at WeMedUp and basically marketing the idea to their entire campus, as well their local area around their university.”
For more information on WeMedup, visit WeMedUp.com or contact Co-founder Elias Davis at edavis@wemedup.com
