When Lila Chamberlain, a sophomore on the pre-med track majoring in neuroscience, realized her Excel sheets and notepads couldn’t keep up with her growing list of medical job shadowing and clinical hours, she created her own solution, the Shadowlog app.
Shadow logs are used by students to help track their clinical observation hours and are often required for medical school applications, making accuracy an important factor. Chamberlain said that before creating the app, she sometimes missed key experiences within medical settings because she wasn’t able to log them right away.
Shadowlog is an app designed for pre-med students to log shadowing details and clinical hours in real time to prevent students from having to remember specific details months later.
Chamberlain said the app’s development and launch took roughly five weeks, and that roughly 50 downloads have been made along with 450 impressions, or views on the app’s advertisements.
Another issue Chamberlain said she found herself and her peers faced during shadowing and clinical hours was understanding heavy jargon used by medical professionals. One solution that Shadowlog presents is an AI search engine embedded in the app that will give a quick definition for any terms students may not have already learned.
Pre-med students Ella Sodoni and Tahlia Conway, both sophomores majoring in biology, said the accuracy and efficiency of Shadowlog has helped them on their pre-med journeys.
“It’s good to have everything in one place,” Conway said. “There’s a section where you can add the specialty you shadow, the position you shadow and the duration you shadow. Having it all together in the app is really helpful.”
Sodoni said she believes that the app can increase student productivity as well as help students to “reflect more deeply and remember the experience.”
“Students are balancing a lot,” Chamberlain said. “I just want to alleviate some of that stress trying to keep track of things. I hope it reminds people why they want to pursue a career in medicine and helps fuel their passion for other things.”
