HSHM grad student, Nora Grand, published her paper, ”The Racial Politics of Medical Education Technology: Race-Based Medicine in Anki and the AnKing Flashcard Deck in Teaching and Learning in Medicine.
Here is the abstract:
“Medical students increasingly rely on third-party resources, or study tools developed outside of formal medical education institutions, to study for the US Medical Licensing Exams (USMLE). One such third-party resource is Anki, an online flashcard platform, and the AnKing, a premade deck created by a group of medical students. While prior scholarship has begun to analyze the content and benefits of such third-party resources, few have considered how not only the content but also the design and usage patterns of such resources may perpetuate medical knowledge that is harmful to patients. Trained in both medicine and history as an MD/PhD student, the author considers how expertise from the social sciences can inform our analysis of the process by which historical medical knowledge on race, health, and disease is developed, maintained through historical change, and passed down to current medical students. Sociological methods in Science and Technology Studies informed the analysis of Anki as a political technology, where social values are embedded in its design, typical use by students, and repair mechanisms, or how the technology is maintained and updated.[…] By considering one popular third-party resource through the lens of the history and sociology of medicine, the author demonstrates how insights from the social sciences inform how medical knowledge develops, transforms over time, and continues to perpetuate within the contemporary educational environment.”