TrendMD, a medical publishing company that helps doctors, researchers, and professionals in STEM-related fields to find the most relevant content amid an unending sea of daily publications, was recently featured in a Canadian Press article by Adam Miller.
The article was published on CBC.ca, CTV.ca, Waterloo Record, Sing Tao Daily, World Journal, Surrey Leader, Metro News, Winnipeg Free Press, Brampton Guardian, Ottawa Citizen, 660 News Radio, Canadian Business, Times Colonist, Yahoo News, Soo Today, Lethbridge Herald and YorkRegion.com, among other sources.
The company is part of the second UTEST cohort and was founded by Paul Kudlow, a Toronto-based physician-scientist.
The program is co-directed by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Everything starts with the information overload problem. Today, there are now over 4,000 new articles that are published per day, and that’s just in biomedicine alone,” says Paul Kudlow, a Toronto-based physician-scientist and founder of TrendMD, a startup financially backed by MaRS Innovation and the Ontario Centres of Excellence.
Kudlow says the amount of published medical research is growing and is spread throughout an estimated 27,000 medical journals, making it nearly impossible to keep up with the latest developments.
“What’s the point in publishing something if there is no guarantee that your intended audience will see it?,” says Kudlow.
In 2012, Kudlow, grappling with the traditional ways to publicize his research, came up with the idea of TrendMD, an online tool that gives readers a way to find content relevant to their interests, while giving publishers, institutions, industry and authors the ability to target their audience.
. . .
Kudlow estimates that TrendMD has about 250,000 articles indexed from about 200 journals that have signed up with the widget, a number he says is growing at five per cent per week.
. . .
The “eureka” moment for Kudlow and his partner Dr. Gunther Eysenbach came in 2012 when they stumbled upon a widget that personalized web content, generated by a company called Outbrain.
As soon as they saw the widget, they knew it would be a perfect fit for scholarly publishing.
In 2013, Kudlow’s application to UTEST — a joint software testing venture between the University of Toronto and MaRS Innovation — received $30,000 in seed funding in exchange for five per cent of the company.
After months of testing, TrendMD launched in May 2014.
The company has received more than $530,000 in funding from investors such as the Ontario Centres of Excellence, MaRS Innovation and outside interests.