The Origin Story
I’m a board-certified emergency physician now, but let’s rewind. Before the board certification came the boards themselves.
In emergency medicine, we take oral boards. That means sitting across from someone while they walk you through high-stakes cases. It’s not natural, it’s not intuitive—and it’s definitely not forgiving. You need to be systematic. You need to practice. And you absolutely can’t miss a step.
When COVID hit, my oral boards were canceled… for years. I had no one to study with. Everything was still in print. I found myself reading through thick prep books, covering up answers with scrap paper, and mentally walking through case questions on my own. It felt clunky. Lonely. Ineffective. There had to be a better way.
That’s when I started experimenting with ChatGPT. I fed it full cases, sight unseen, and prompted it to test me like a real oral board examiner would. The experience was instantly better. Suddenly, it felt like I was practicing with someone who got it— someone who knew the boards, knew the structure, and kept me on track. It was systematic, challenging, and surprisingly fun.
I passed my exam with flying colors.
But more importantly, I couldn’t shake the feeling: what if we gave medical students this kind of learning experience earlier? What if we combined Sketchy’s creativity with the power of interactive, AI-powered cases ones that simulate how students will actually encounter patients in OSCEs, on rotations, and eventually in real life?
Reimagining What Sketchy Could Be
Back in med school, I remember wanting something like this, something interactive, something case-based. But the tech wasn’t there yet. A decade later, with LLMs and natural language interfaces finally in play, the time was right. So we got to work.
We started with the fundamentals: build fast, build smart, talk to everyone.
Andrew (my co-founder) and I sketched the vision. Our engineers prototyped. We didn’t try to overbuild. We focused on the core experience: high-quality, interactive clinical cases powered by AI, aligned with how students think, learn, and perform.
We took our early builds to conferences to get real feedback. Our first stop? IMSH in San Diego. The building literally flooded from a rare downpour but it was worth it. We met passionate faculty from across the country, all eager to see what we were working on. What we heard over and over: they wanted to teach clinical reasoning through cases, but the logistics were overwhelming: too few faculty, not enough high-quality cases, limited in-person time, tech constraints, no scalable way to measure progress.
Even SIM centers, with all their resources, couldn’t get students enough reps.
So we kept building because this was the problem we were meant to solve.
Pilots, Progress, and Proof
We partnered with faculty at Charles Drew University to run our first in-class pilot during the cardiac block. I drove up to L.A., and we ran it live.
The results were clear and fast.
- 92% of students reported increased confidence in clinical reasoning after using DDx
- 89% preferred DDx over other case-based learning platforms
- 96% wanted to use DDx throughout their education
- Faculty rated DDx a 4.8 out of 5 for educational value and in-class engagement
- And perhaps most importantly: students were having fun while learning
They weren’t just memorizing, they were thinking through real-world problems. They were tying together pharm, path, anatomy, and clinical decision-making into an integrated experience that mirrored actual patient care. And they could repeat the experience as many times as they needed to get it right.
Several other pilots reported similar gains in confidence, engagement, and student satisfaction reinforcing what we’ve heard consistently: DDx fills a long-standing gap in scalable clinical learning.
We had built a clinical reasoning gym.
DDx Was Born
In under a year, we went from napkin sketch to full product launch. With help from incredible faculty advisors, we built a growing library of cases, piloted across multiple programs, and refined relentlessly.
Each month brought new pilots and new data, which helped us shape DDx to meet the needs of today’s classrooms, SIM centers, and clerkship directors. We didn’t just chase features, we followed the problems educators told us they needed solved.
And we continue to evolve that way today.
What Makes DDx Different
DDx blends generative AI and expert-authored medical content into an intuitive, natural-feeling conversation so students learn the way real clinicians think. But the technology never runs ahead of pedagogy. Every case is developed in partnership with medical educators, with defined learning objectives, relevant integration points, and measurable outcomes.
For faculty, DDx offers insight into student performance and reasoning patterns making clinical teaching more targeted, more scalable, and more effective.
Try It Yourself
We’re proud to see DDx in use at institutions across the country and we’re offering pilots for schools interested in bringing it to their students. Whether you're training medical students, residents, PAs, or NPs, DDx can flex to fit your program.
To schedule a demo or start a pilot, email us at Sales@sketchy.com. Let’s create a smarter, more scalable approach to clinical education, together.
— Saud Siddiqui, MD Co-founder, Sketchy
