An Insightful Medical Journal: Interview with JoMI Co-founder, Nikita Bernstein

Anyone in the medical field knows that there are hundreds of journals to choose from for virtually every specialty. Unless you have an astronomic impact factor or serve a highly unique niche, it’s hard to stand out. One that certainly has stood out to us is the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), which is a peer-reviewed scientific video journal. The same co-founder behind JoVE just launched JoMI – the Journal of Medical Insight (www.jomi.com). We had the opportunity to speak with Co-founder and CEO, Nikita Bernstein, about the journal and his goals for the publication.

Shiv Gaglani, Medgadget: What was the impetus to create the Journal of Medical Insight?

Nikita Bernstein: My partners and I were all looking for something meaningful to do and, for us, it doesn’t get more meaningful than healthcare.  The problem we saw was that clinical outcomes are not nearly as good they should be given the medical knowledge available.

And there are many reasons for this, for sure, but consider that medicine is constantly changing, yet medical education is lagging – recently there was a paper in Annals of Surgery about surgical residents not being adequately prepared coming out of their residency (1) and another paper that discussed that complexity is growing, but access to observe and study is diminishing.

Consider that we just published an arthroscopic shoulder procedure that Dr. Gobezie pioneered – how would other surgeons really learn if they do not have the luxury of flying down to Cleveland to watch Dr. Gobezie operate?

And that’s where we saw the need: despite the adage of “see one, do one, teach one” in medical education, nobody has been investing effort into systematically producing high-quality, easy-to-understand surgical video-articles.

So we’ve put together a unique combination of talent and experience to do just that.  I previously co-founded JoVE, a scientific video journal. Dr. Robert Dolan was a field medical provider during the initial phases of the Iraq conflict and subsequently an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women’s hospital. Jonathan Ellis is a brilliant videographer.  And the rest of the team all bring something unique and valuable.

Medgadget: Who is your primary audience at this stage?

Bernstein: At present, our primary targets are surgeons and medical students.  As we grow, we intend to also have content for dentists and non-surgical medical specialties. We have already received subscriptions from the following libraries:

• MGH – Treadwell Library
• Harvard Medical School – Countway Library
• Stanford – Lane Library
• Western Connecticut Health Network
• Johnson Memorial Medical Center
• Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital
• North Vermont Regional Hospital

Medgadget: Can you describe what makes you different from other journals?

Bernstein: We are investing a tremendous amount of resources into video production and, as a result, we are the only clinical journal to focus on systematically publishing a volume of high quality medical video content.

We are also evaluating the impact our articles will have on outcomes and we cover production and publication costs for the most impactful content.

Medgadget: How do you intend to be self-sustaining?

Bernstein: We planned our life-cycle in two phases. The first phase is to reach sustainability through subscriptions from hospitals, medical teaching institutions, and individuals. The second is to deploy our content in medically-underserved areas. I am not expecting the latter component of the business to be profitable, but it addresses the impact we are aiming to have.

Medgadget: Do you see Google Glass and other technologies playing a role in the development of your journal?

Bernstein: We actually tried Glass for filming, which ended up not being very useful – the angle at which it films is not quite right.  That said, I think Glass and similar technologies have very significant potential.  Like what the Pristine.IO guys are doing is great.  As for us, we have some ideas on how to integrate our content with various technologies, Glass included.

Medgadget: I know you were involved with the popular JoVE; can you describe your background in medicine/publishing?

Bernstein: I was one of the founders of JoVE (www.jove.com).  Prior to JoVE, I was a software developer at SiMX (www.simx.com) and the way JoVE got started was when my friend Moshe Pritsker invited me to be his technical co-founder.  Moshe became the CEO, I became the CTO, we put together the first version of the journal, raised some money, and so I got started in the publishing world.  Then we spent about five years building the journal, growing our team, and, as entrepreneurship goes, I was involved with pretty much every aspect of the business from training editorial talent, to going to conferences, to assisting video production – all in all, it was a tremendous educational experience.

So I have quite a bit of experience in operations and publishing scientific videos, but not a lot in medicine.  I do, however, really want to make an impact on healthcare, so I’ve surrounded myself with the right people who share that with me.  Hopefully that much is clear from what we’ve put together on www.jomi.com.