SimTec MD White Paper
Abstract
The SimTec MD project solves several persistent challenges within traditional medical education. SimTec MD’s vision is to bring medical education into the 21st century by applying and combining technologies to create the Medical Metaverse in web 3.0. The challenge of transforming undergraduate students into doctors has been one of the more challenging job training issues. Traditional medical education has understandable challenges in training health professionals in the clinical setting on live patients. Virtual reality de-risks this training by providing learners with unlimited clinical access to virtual patients. Traditional medical education is a system that considers medical learners as consumers and has a high extraction rate in the form of student debt. A blockchain solution that provides a community token allows for medical learners to be rewarded as creators through their participation in building the network and engaging with medical institutions, educators, and companies. Lastly, advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence allow for the combination of these technologies into a virtual world designed to optimize the learning process in a way not previously possible with traditional education and Web 2.0 solutions.
Introduction & Problem
Health professions are a core constituent of a society’s essential workers. This means that no nation can avoid the challenging task of transforming an undergraduate student into a competent doctor. Traditional institutions for medical education have wrestled admirably with these complex challenge for centuries but have been heald back technologies not yet available.
One of the core challenges to medical education is balancing the trade-off between the benefits of real clinical experience for medical trainees and the risk of being borne by live patients as medical learners “practice” medicine on them. For years, medical research has shown that real-life experience, whether in the clinics or in simulation rooms, has been the most effective form of training (ref). However, real clinical experience is associated with obvious risk and physical simulation centers are disastrous to scale (ref). Additionally, even if medical students were given unlimited access and scope of practice in clinical settings, the clinics themselves are not designed for educational purposes but rather for patient care.Consider that in a real-world clinical setting there is no way of ensuring the patient in front of the student matches the ability and needs of the learner. These inherent challenges have resulted in accepted inadequacies in the process of medical education because obvious solutions were not yet available.
One resultant defect in the process of medical training is an extended amount of time spent in a lecture based learning. Typically the first two years of medical school are spent in lectures before medical learners are able to have meaningful clinical experience. The reasons for this division are obvious; no one want the first year medical student taking over their care. An unintended effect of this division of labor is that medical learners are exposed to a tremendous amount of theoretical content that is divorced from context that comes from clinical experience. This might be why the the literature on learning shows that lectures in medical school may actually impede learning (ref). This leacture-heavy format has the unintended effect of dividing medical training into a learning phase (first two years) and a doing phase (second two years), rather than a lifelong learning process that is essential for an ever-changing field such as medicine.
The Web 2.0 community over the past 5 years has developed a series of inspiring innovations in an attempt to bring medical education into the digital age. Some of these companies’ positive impacts have tried to assist this process by removing locational barriers to great medical information. Several companies have led this movement by providing effective and efficient online lecture-based content. Others have digitized medical textbooks into online pdfs.
The downside of some Web 2.0 solutions often relates to their effectiveness in replacing traditional lecture-based medical content. These paid online tools were so effective that medical students in mass stopped attending lectures, even when taught by Nobel prize winners (ref). This digitized information means that medical students went into online isolation years before the COVID-19 pandemic because most of these tools are isolating. This is a real pain point for the medical industry as a whole that has always depended on the professional collegiality that has existed between the practicing doctors and the rising generation of medical students. Additionally, it is difficult to say how but this isolation may also exacerbate the already shockingly high rates of mental health challenges within the medical trainee population (ref).
Both traditional medical training and Web 2.0 medical training have had an unavoidably high take rate from medical students. Traditional medical training involves high tuition costs and minimal clinical access as medical schools try to fit an increasing number of students into a limited supply of clinical environments. Medical students exit training with on average $400,000 in student debt (ref). Additionally, the web 2.0 online training solution has been able to improve the educational lecture-based content but the bill has been placed on the medical students as tools that need to be purchase these, in addition to their tuition. While the medical community at large appreciated the advancements made by these institutions to increase the effectiveness of teaching, the structure of web 2.0 has not allowed medical students who were early in the community to benefit from supporting, creating, and influencing the development of these companies and projects.
While every community has a collective interest in the training of our next generation of health professionals, there are several groups that have emerged as having a particularly close connection. These include medical learners at all stages and additionally medical educators and influencers, medical institutions, and interested companies involved in innovation. Each of these core communities exchanges value between one another as they fulfill their respective roles in medical training. To demonstrate a sample of the exchange of value, in the USA alone there are over 200 undergraduate pre-medical programs, resulting in hundreds of thousands of students enrolling in these courses, purchasing test preparation kits, writing the medical college admissions test (MCAT), and working with application agencies, all in an effort to matriculate in a medical school. Each of these communities represents billion-dollar markets interacting with one another as they contribute to the challenge of medical education.
This brief introduction to medical education and its associated challenges is not meant as a criticism of the current institution or individuals in this space. It is our belief that some of these issues were insurmountable, at least before recent technological developments in the Web 3.0 space.
Goals/Vision
SimTec MDs’ primary goal is to transition medical education into the 21st century. Traditional medical education has served students and communities well, however, it is utilizing an outdated operating system. New technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) paired with web3 token economics, provide an incredible opportunity for positive disruption in medical education. It is our belief that the synergy of these general-purpose technologies in one tool will signal the transition of traditional medical education into the 21st century in what we call the Medical Metaverse.
Diagram 1: This Venn diagram shows the technologies combined to add value to SimTec MD’s Medical Metaverse.
Moving medical education from the traditional model to the Medical Metaverse
| Traditional Medical Education and Web 2.0 | Web3 in the Medical Metaverse |
| Early clinical access and learning is limited | Clinical experience begins in virtual clinics on day one |
| Medical Learners are considered cumstomers for exploitation resulting in extreme levels of student debt | Medical students are considered creators and contributors and are rewarded for engagement |
| Medical institutions are limited to the teaching capabilities of local talent | Medical institutions have access to the world best medical educators |
| Clinics and hospital environments are designed for patient care | Virtual environments present learners with patients tailored to the learners personal needs |
| Medical training credentials are largely determined by a single institution and are considered private | Medical training and certification is considered public data and can be validated throughout the entire process of education |
| Web 2.0 online learning material lack the collegiality nature traditional medical education | A medical metaverse allows professionals to mentor and give back to the younger generation and contribute to a sense of collegiality. |
| Medical educators and influncers forced to advertise inorder monetize their teaching skills | Educators can be financially rewarded for their skills as a medical educator in an of themselves |
Value proposition
SimTec MD’s Medical Metaverse combines the utility of several general-purpose technologies. that have the potential to add value to traditional medical education. Therefore, the tables below describe certain values added by each of the following technology categories: Virtual Reality, Tokens, NFTs, Blockchain. These value additions are separated into tables to demonstrate how each group benefits.
Table 1: Medical Learners
| Traditional Model or Web 2.0 (pain point) | Technology | Value Proposition of New Technology |
| Limited Clinical Access | Virtual Reality | Unlimited access to virtual patients |
| Competence is determined by one medical institution | Non-TransferableNFT Badges | Medical competence of learners is able to be transparently validated. |
| Excessive abstract learning that is divorced from clinical experience. | Virtual Reality | Contextual learning that results from feedback learning systems |
| Separated learning tools between clinical environments, texts books, online resources, and educators. | Virtual Reality | All these learning tools can be combined in a VR headset. |
| High financial extraction from medical student with no system in place to value a medical student contribution to the educational experience | $STMD Tokens | Medical learners that participate early and often are considered creators that are able to be financially rewarded while learning medicine |
| Serious content manner potentially contributing to poor mental health outcomes from medical learners | Virtual Reality | Ability to gamify portions of medical education |
| Clinical environments may or may not reflect the a learners need and skill level | AI/Algorithm | Virtual clinics integrate the latest learning theory so that a learners clinic present them with the right virtual patient at the right time to optimize their learning and development |
| Access to the world’s best medical educators is limited by geographical location and association with students medical institution | Virtual Reality | Allow medical learners and educators from around the world to connect in a meaningful clinical environment |
| Learners are required to manually track their clinical skills | AI/Algorithm | Clinical scores are automatically tracked over time to optimize the learning process |
| International medical learners have no access to other countries clinical training during the process of switching countries | Virtual Reality | Medical Learners can train and be certified in a countries regionalized content prior arriving in the country or before competence exams |
| General community trust that medical learners are certified to practice a certain scope of medicine | Non-TransferableNFT Badges | Medical learners certification can be validate on a blockchain to protect self and patient |
| Limited amounts of personalization in the professional training setting | Functional NFT assets | Accumulation of scare collectable digital content that can be used for personalization and expression or be transferred for value. |
Table 2: Medical Educators
| Traditional Model or Web 2.0 (pain point) | Technology | Value Proposition of New Technology |
| Medical Educators were paid by extracting from the medical learners | $STMD Tokens | Medical Educators are paid for adding value to the network |
| Medical educators had little ability to reward and interact with followers | $STMD Tokens | Tokens allow Educators to financially reward their followers and build loyalty |
| Medical educators were conflicted into tradvertising in order to be rewarded for their skills in medical eduction | $STMD Tokens | Educator who find advertising against their professional code can now be financially rewarded for their skills in teaching with no need to advertise products |
| Web 2.0 technologies generally had a destructive effect on professional collegiality and professional mentoring relationships within the medical community. Additionally, practicing doctors not associated with medical institutions have little opportunity to connect and contribute to the next generation of medical Learners. | Virtual Reality | Virtual reality allows students to interact with and learn directly from professional role models from any location in the world. Additionally, any doctor has the ability to contribute to medical education and the rising generation. |
| Content created by medical educators was often extracted by the medical institutions and a free model of distribution made it difficult to differentiate good teaching material from poor | NFT | Medical educators are considered independent creators and owners of medical content they organize for teaching and the NFT system allows for the Learners to understand what content has the highest yield to other users. |
| Medical educators had no mechanisms in place to validate if their teaching was in reality improving the understanding of their students | Non-Transferable NFT Badges | The blockchain allows Medical Educators to track the effectiveness of their teaching and provide positive reinforcement or corrective mechanisms. This effect has the potential to improve both individual and collective medical education. |
| Medical Educators had little access to technology to supplement their teaching capacity. | Virtual Reality | Medical Educators provide the Medical Metaverse with their medical expertise and SimTec MD provides them with development teams to build exclusive content. |
Table 3: Medical institutions
| Traditional Model or Web 2.0 (pain point) | Technology | Value Proposition of New Technology |
| Medical Institutions may have a large barrier to developing virtual reality content themselves. . | Virtual Reality | Medical institutions provide the Medical Metaverse with their medical expertise and SimTec MD provides them with development teams to build their content. |
| Inability to scale real clinical environments or traditional simulation rooms. | Virtual Reality | Medical institutions can now provide move students with a scalable and effective clinical environment |
| Medical institution’s admissions teams were dependent on surrogate markers (MCAT, GPA, interviews) to determine the capabilities of undergraduate medical learners. | Non-Transferable NFT Badges | Undergraduate learners with medical aspiration can have public verification of medical competence and certification prior to applying to medical schools. |
| Medical institutions have traditionally struggled observing competence in medical students. | Virtual Reality and Blockchain | Both these features allow for observable and verifiable competence for medical learners. |
Table 4: Medical & Non-Medical Companies (Partnerships)
| Traditional Model or Web 2.0 (pain point) | Technology | Value Proposition of New Technology |
| Lack of transparency in connecting advertising between companies, educators, and institutions | $STMD Tokens | Publicly verifiable ledger to validate interactions |
| Difficulty with engaging health professionals with research and development products and concepts | $STMDTokens | Health professionals can interact and provide feedback in the research and development process in exchange for tokens |
| Companies spend large money for product development and user feedback | Virtual Reality | Research and development teams can build relatively function minimal variable product in virtual reality to showcase features and receive feedback |
| Changes advertising product to a distracted generation that is characterized by split-screen impressions. | Virtual Reality and Blockchain | Allows for not only impressions but user engagement with products that can be tranked and verified on the blockchain |
Assumptions
Our core assumptions
- That medical training in virtual reality can effectively substitute traditional medical education and web 2.0 solutions.
- The SimTec MD can accumulate a community of medical educators and learners on its platform in order to attract other interested communities to share value with each other.
- That the medical community is ready for blockchain technologies including tokens and NFTs.
- That personal virtual reality headsets are ubiquitous enough to scale in this market
- That virtual reality technology has advanced far enough to be effective enough for medical education.
- That there is a use-case for the medical community to use a token to exchange value.
Counterpoints
- Our initial target markets in Phase I of our development timeline are medical learners and medical influencers. These these groups include demographics that are currently the highest adopters of web3 and virtual reality technologies. Medical institutions are the most likely of our four main communities to be reluctant to adopt a token-based system. This is why medical institutions are considered a part of phase II of our development timeline. It has been demonstrated with Web 2.0 technologies within medicine that if there is a large enough user base that a network effect allows the new technology to become and industry standard in reluctant organizations.
Tokenomics
Utility Token Summary
- Medical students gain tokens as they enter the ecosystem and use these to learn and exchange value with the community.
- Educators are rewarded in token for adding the medical knowledge and colegiality to the medical metaverse.
- Medical Institutions have the ability to scale their clinical training in an effective manner while token access to VR development and technologies is difficult to be managed within the university setting.
- Companies are enabled to exchange meaningful engagement with there product for token in the esteemed population of medical students and future doctors.
Token Utility Expansion
The $STMD Token drives utility across 4 major stakeholders in the medical community
Medical Learners (students):
- Students earn tokens for onboarding to SimTec MD
- Students earn tokens for completing VR labs and completing learning objectives
- Students use tokens to buy digital/or physical medical equipment from the marketplace
- Students use tokens to buy educational content from medical educators
- Students use tokens to access lab space from virtual hospital
- Medical educators earn tokens for creating engaging educational content
Medical Educators (influencers & teachers):
- Educators get paid in SimTec tokens for their educational VR content they create on the SimTec platform
- Educators may sell NFT apparel and equipment to medical learners in SimTec marketplace
Companies/Institutions:
- Rent metaverse land from SimTec MD by staking large amounts of $STMD tokens
- Buy metaverse land from SimTec MD for digital twin hospital
- Charge $STMD for course enrollment
- Students and Educators purchase physical & digital accessories using $STMD
- Medical Institutions can subsidize lab time for students through $STMD purchase
Investors:
- Token buy-back & lock: Use a percentage of cash revenue to buy-back SimTec tokens from the open market and lock up
- Higher utilization of the platform equates to higher token price
- Influencers no longer need to advertise to monetize. They can be directly reward with the $STMD from medical learners for their content.
Tokenomics Overview
The total supply of $STMD Tokens is 1,000,000,000. The distribution of token will be split according to the chat 1 and over the next 4 years according the chat two with the token release schedule.
Chart 1: – Add Ajeet’s supply-side table
Chart 2: – Add pie chart with token distribution percentage
Team: The Team will receive 15% of the $STMD Tokens to be released over a 4-year period to founders and early team members. This pool has a 12 month cliff for the token initial realse. After the cliff token will be vested on a monthly basis uptil 48 months. 5% from this pool will be kept aside in a token option pool to continue to attract and incentivize tallent into the team.
Advisors: Our advisors have opened significant doors for SimTec MD even before launch, and we will be assigning them 5% $STMD Tokens. This pool has a 3 month cliff for the token initial realse. After the cliff token will be vested on a monthly basis uptil 12 months.
Private Rounds (Pre-Sale): 16% of the tokens, representing 160,000,000 $STMD Tokens, will be available to private investors. 6% will be available in the seed round at a price of $0.018 (discount of 55%) and another 10% will be available in the private round at a price of $0.032 (discount of 20%).
Public Sale: A further 1% of the $STMD Tokens in circulation, representing 10,000,000 $STMD Tokens, will become available from an exchange through an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO). The tokens will be available at the public sale rate of $0.040 and this will serve to engage early us of SimTec MDs products as well as providing liquidity for the token.
Strategic Sale: 3% of the tokens, representing 30,000,000 $STMD Tokens, will be available to strategic partners for purchase. These tokens will be available at the sale rate of $0.010 and this will serve to engage strategic partners whose engement is benificial to the network but payment is a necessary part of commitment to the network.
Scholarship Fund: This fund allows for SImTec to reward a select group of medical learners that apply for this fund. $4% of $STMD Tokens, representing 40,000,000 tokens. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 24 months. Select medical students will be rewarded for their pursuite of medical education in VR and act as natural emasitors for the product within their respective institutions.
Educator Fund: This fund allows for SImTec to enlist a select group of medical educators to bring their content and their communities to the ecosystem. This include $3% of $STMD Tokens, representing 30,000,000 tokens. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 36 months. These educators and influencers will contribute their knowledge to enhance the collective medical knowledge of the community. Additionally, they will contribute to the collegiality and mentorship that has always existed in traditional medical training.
Partnership Fund: This fund includes 5% of the tokens, representing 50,000,000 $STMD Tokens, and will be available to partners that are either institutions, metaverse technologies and insitutions. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 48 months.
Ecosystem Fund: In an effort to reward early active users,14% of tokens have been set aside toserve as incentives to increase engagement. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 48 months. Their use includes learn-to-earn, airdrops, and staking rewards. The supply of these tokens will be replenished through an exchange rate on token-for-service transactions inorder to control the supply of $STMD Tokens.
Treasury Fund: This fund includes 22% of the tokens, representing 220,000,000 $STMD Tokens. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 48 months.
Liquidity Fund: This fund includes 7% of the tokens, representing 70,000,000 $STMD Tokens. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 36 months.
Marketing and Rewards Fund: This fund includes 14% of the tokens, representing 140,000,000 $STMD Tokens. These tokens will begin to become available on TGE and thereafter vested monthly over 24 months. This fund we especially be utilized to marketing with the web3 community.
Product Roadmap
This section outlines the timeline for the project divided into four phases. The rationality of these phases is a combination or development complexity and our our perception of market readiness. This section should only be considered a summary and for a more extended road map go to section extended product roadmap.
Summary:
Overarching Objective: Bring all interested parties in medical education onto one Web 3.0 platform.
Timeline: 2 years (including consolidation periods between each phase).
Costs:
- Minimalist Version: 2.3M
- Expanded Version: 4.4M
Phase I
Overarching objective: This phase develops core functionality for medical students and establishes the token’s utility.
Timeline: 6 months
Summary: 438K – 776K
Phase II
Overarching objective: This section phase expands functionality to include all groups
Timelines: 6 months
Amount: 700K – 1.4M
Phase III
Overarching objective: This phase expands the functionality of the token and scope of product for each of the groups.
Timeline: 6 months
costs: 1.1M – 2.2M
Phase IV
Overarching Objective: Connecting the Medical Physician community and the patient community in virtual environments.
Timeline:
Cost:
Extended Product Roadmap
Phase I
Overarching objective: This phase develops core functionality for medical students and establishes the token’s utility.
Timeline: 6 months
Summary: $438K – $776K (minimal – extended version)
- In game token purchasing system (55K-110K)
- Generic in-app purchasing (10K)
- Linking assets to NFT/blockchain (10K)
- In app-purchasing (NFTs) (5K)
- Smart contracting writing (30K )
- Content (130K-260K)
- Core scenarios (80K)
- History taking (50K)
- Physiological audio sources library (1K)
- Communities (225k-350K)
- Multi-player Game Framework (25K)
- Network servers (100k)
- Avatar Personalization (20K)
- Social MUE (50K)
- External Social Media Sharing (15K)
- Internal social media integration (15K)
- Misc Development (17K-34K)
- User feedback channels (5K)
- Scoring dashboard (10K)
- Monitor version capabilities (tutorial) (2K)
- Legal (10K-20K)
- Crypto consulting (5K)
- Equity legal fees (5k)
- Hiring: Costs included in other expense categories
- full stack Developer
- Smart contracting writer
Phase II
Overarching objective: This section phase expands functionality to include all groups within our metaverse ecosystem.
Timelines: 6 months
Cost: $700K – $1.4M
- In game token purchasing system (60K)
- Third party integration (advertiser companies)
- Land purchasing capabilities
- Content (66K)
- Pathology integration (100K)
- Curriculum personalization (50K)
- Emergency department (50K)
- Video integration (50K)
- Communities (180k-320K)
- Hiring: mobile developer/work
- Phone application (40K-80K)
- Score tracking
- Friends
- Market place
- Functional MUE (20K-40K)
- Holodeck (50K-100K)
- Influencers (50K-100K)
- Connection network
- UI/scoring/tracking
- Coloured token
- Misc Development & Costs (260K-520K)
- AI development (150K)
- Programming process and Blueprinting automation
- Scenario development
- Patient development
- Other headset capabilities (10K)
- Institutional sales coordination and travel expenses (100K)
- AI development (150K)
- Legal & financial Costs (250K)
- Crypto consulting team for influencers (50K)
- Financing related costs (200K)
- Hirings: Costs included in other expense categories
- AI developer
- Instituonal Sales Team
- Cheif Financial Officer full time
Phase III
Overarching objective: This phase expands the functionality of the token and scope of product for each of the groups.
Timeline: 6 months
costs: 1.1M – 2.2M
- Third party (305K-610K)
- Third party capabilities with scoring and coding (100K)
- White labeling an integrated scoring system (50K
- Adapting to trial institutions (10K/institutions at 50K)
- Institutional hospitals (125K)
- System Design (50K)
- Design costs (25K)
- Code reapplication (50K)
- Certification/assessment versions (80K)
- System Design (10K)
- VR development of scenario (50K)
- User testing phase for comparison (20K)
- Medical content (790K – 1.4M)
- EPA expansion (270K-500K)
- System Design (30K)
- VR development/programming (80K)
- NLU training (100K)
- Verification process (50K)
- AI development: Schema-based scoring system (100K)
- Adding surgical wing (120K-240)
- System Design (25K)
- Design team (20K)
- Vr development/Programming (50K)
- Liability and legal considerations (25K)
- Gamified hospitals (300K-600K)
- Game narration (50K)
- Design (100K)
- Voice (50K)
- VR Development/ Programming (100K)
- EPA expansion (270K-500K)
Phase IV
This phase includes all of our wildest dreams.
- Our own public blockchain with private sub-stacks for individual institutions.
- Certification and/or accreditation in the VR world that translates into the physical world.
