Profile: Dr. Asif Ali and His “MD Trainer” Program

By Dana Inayah Cann, Muslim Media News Service (MMNS)

Dr. Asif Ali, a physician in Houston, had an idea while completing his residency in internal medicine: Teach the medical and non-medical population complex medical procedures with the help of computer-generated animation.

Today, that idea has become a reality. MD Trainer (MTD), an interactive software package with an intricate library of medical procedures, has been created as a joint venture by Dr. Ali and Amerra, Inc., a medical visualization company specializing in animations, 3D illustrations and interactive web-based applications.

”As a physician, we are all teachers and educators to our patients,” said Dr. Ali, president of MDT. “MDT is the vehicle to disseminate this information in a comprehensive and standardized way.”

MDT can be used in many ways; physicians can give lectures showing animations of medial procedures; physicians can educate patients who want to be informed about future procedures; and medical device companies can use the interactive software to train physicians on how to use their products.

Since the launch of MDT two years ago, a story of the animations has been published in Internal Medicine News and an animation of mold prevention for American Mold Guard Scientific (AMGS) has aired on PBS’s “Nightly Business Report: Bill of Health – Hospital Acquired Infections.”

”We have had a number of clients that we continue to work with to keep pushing the technology as far as possible,” said Dr. Ali, who is also the president for AMGS. “For example, we have invested in virtual reality as part of our platform to give the utmost to our current and future clientele.”

Software preview and examples of animations can be seen on www.mdtrainer.com. Examples of animations include: a demonstration of a hip replacement procedure; a “how to” on caring for acne with the use of medication; demonstration of a central line procedure with voice instruction, and much more.

MDT is a part of Dr. Ali’s goal of becoming a cardiologist–for which he will be doing his fellowship this July at the University of Texas Health Science Center.

”As a cardiologist, I have to efficiently teach my patients about the choices that they have for treatment in an efficient, easy way to understand,” said Dr. Ali. “So my career choice is not limited by MDT, but rather, MDT serves as a vehicle for my passion of effective and efficient teaching.”

Dr. Ali was born in Hyderabad, India. He completed his undergraduate work at Trinity University in San Antonio. He completed medical school and his residency at the UT Health Science Center in Houston.

”I hope our future generations realize their limitless potential in their talents and think outside the box as their parents did when they came to this great country with almost nothing but clothes on their back.”

The next step for Dr. Ali is to create training software for health care institutions to “train physicians in a virtual interactive way.”

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