Not every project is drafted out with an extensive plan why im building capabilisense. More often than not, projects start with an itch that won’t go away.
This is what Capabilisense stemmed from.
Nothing too dramatic. No startup culture whiteboard covered in arrows and ethical buzzwords. Just an understanding that grows over time. The understanding that most methods of recognizing human capability, especially in the context of professional domains, are shallow, incomplete, misleading, and sometimes wildly inaccurate.
Look at recruitment. Look at education. Look at medicine and research. Look at thousands of capable individuals trying to demonstrate what they are truly capable of.
The more I studied the problem, the more one thing became apparent: ability is still measured using outmoded signals.
This is the reason I am building Capabilisense.
It is not meant to be a platform, but rather an attempt to solve an age-old problem.
Program Director Expectations vs Real Capability
If you speak to a program director in any field with competition, they will relay the same difficulty.
They have to assess hundreds, even thousands of candidates. Each has transcripts, letters of evaluation, and statements. They all look very similar.
This is also true for capability. It’s never the same.
Program directors typically want to know whether or not their applicants can successfully perform the duties required in a given profession. Unfortunately, available data rarely answer this question sufficiently.
Most résumés indicate little more than where applicants were educated, not how they think. Moreover, recommendations are subjective, focusing more on personal opinion than on how the individual responds to varying degrees of pressure.
Thus, decision-makers fall back on reputational shortcuts like institutional prestige, publication count, and other familiar indicators.
Lack of data spurs literature on the potential of capabilities to be assessed by less conventional, more meaningful indicators than standard credentials.
Unraveling the Research Fellow Pathways Problem
Some of the stories coming from research fellows are all too familiar.
Most are brilliant, inquisitive and, in many cases, exceedingly motivated.
Most people navigate their way into research through a complex and, often, exceedingly frustrating process. It should not be this way. One individual is able to start a research project, but only because they happen to be in the right place at the right time and are able to meet a suitable mentor. Another person is able to spend a long time in an environment that is designed to foster the creation of research projects, but is unable to join any of the projects because they fail to get the project in place and to assemble the people he needs to create that environment. Another person possesses a clay-like ability to be molded into a researcher through the acquisition of very strong analytical skills, but is excluded from a position that is deemed to require research experience, as the only legitimate way of acquiring such experience.
This creates a strange paradox. Those who are able to make a meaningful contribution to research often find themselves unable to join the research ecosystem.
Other people take a conventional route because they know how things are done.
Capabilisense partially developed because of this observation. The potential for impactful work exists before the system acknowledges it.
Medical Education Continues To Work With Limited Signals
Among the training systems, medical education is one of the most, if not the most, demanding.
And it is understandable. The primary concern is the competence of the practitioner.
However, even a system as structured as this one, potential is often captured by limited, restricted, and reductive signals.
Marks. Ratings. Status of the institution.
These signals are important, but they are not the entire picture.
A student with a good memory who may do very well in written [university] examinations may do poorly in real-life, ambiguous, unstructured situations.
A counterpart may demonstrate impressive clinical skills, outstanding cooperation, and exceptional problem-solving abilities, while being average in all the standardized measures.
If the intention of medical education is to prepare people for the sophisticated and complicated nature of the healthcare system, it must learn to value and appreciate the recognition of potential in a wider scope.
That is the foundation of Capabilisense.
Medical Students and the Search for Meaningful Work
If you have spoken to a sizeable number of medical students, you will have observed a pattern.
They wish to probe research. Participate in collaborative effort. Understand how findings are actualized. Some are even more interested in how these findings are integrated into the health systems.
However, grasping the appropriate channels for these is not always clear cut.
Students have spent weeks, and in some case even months, mass emailing to laboratories, hoping to receive any form of correspondence.
In other situations, they take part in collaborations, only to find that their contribution is restricted to repetitive, and menial activity. Where no real learning takes place.
There is no doubt that the drive, and the inquisitiveness is present.
In most cases, the infrastructure that connects students to actionable and fulfilling tasks, is not in place.
Capabilisense is attempting to rework this infrastructure, by concentrating on the more clear, and actionable, collaborative, and demonstrative signals.
International Medical Graduates (IMGs) Face Hidden Barriers.
A group that is in the frontline of illustrating the operative flaws is international medical graduates, better known as IMGs.
Most of these individuals have already undergone the process of training and education that is considered to be one of the most rigorous in the field of medicine.
Some have clinical papers attributed to them, while some have committee on publication (COP) based research. Others may have clinical papers attributed to them, and still other may have research committees that are based on an international clinical practice.
However, once they enter a new health care system, they face the reality of starting their career wheel nearer to the starting point.
Their previous accomplishments, no matter how significant they may be, are easily overlooked in the new environment.
Once again, systems are forced to overly simplistic evaluations. These evaluations are no initiations, and are not an indictment on a system that is proving to be functional. Rather, it is a critique of the system that is being utilized, and is rapidly on its way to being obsolete.
Just because talent is not apparent in traditional ways, skilled individuals remain underused.
Capabilisense focuses on recognition of talent potential, regardless of background.
Medical Student Research Should Be More Than a Checkbox
Medical student research is now a tactical requirement.
Students are aware of the importance of publications and research project to the strength of their residency and fellowship applications. Hence, research is pursued.
Sometimes out of passion.
Other times out of strategy.
With that being said, the truth is uncomfortable.
Research, in most instances, becomes a box to tick and not an intellectual engagement.
Most students join research projects that are already in the final stages and make very little contribution only to gain authorship.
That does not advance science nor does it provide students with meaningful research experiences.
Research is about curiosity, problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration.
Those are the capabilities that Capabilsense works to identify.
Research Experience Is Harder to Evaluate Than It Looks
When someone states that they have research experience, what does it really mean?
Were they responsible for the study design?
Did they conduct the data analysis?
Was authoring the manuscript part of their responsibilities?
Or were they only involved in the collection of the initial data?
On a resume, all of these experiences are easily interchangeable.
However, practically speaking, the extent of engagement may differ significantly.
Conventional systems, however, do not account for the intricacies of the situation.
Capabilisense looks for ways to move beyond simply recording participations toward answering the question of what a person’s contribution to a research project was.
Because all the valuable potential lies in the specifics.
Patient care hinges on more than technical knowledge.
In the care of patients, empathy, communication, judgment, and teamwork are all important ingredients.
Two clinicians may have the same level of medical knowledge, yet they may create completely different experiences for patients.
One listens to the patient, explains everything and adjusts to the prevailing ambiguity.
The other may be protocol driven and fails to engage with the patient.
Both may have passed the same exam.
Yet, the value is not the same.
Capability systems should value and recognize this type of problem.
That is the type of thinking that influences Capabilisense with regard to professional competence in complicated systems.
Capability is what emerges in practice, and medical schools provide the foundation.
The learning is strictly organized and intense.
It is where knowledge begins, although textbooks are not enough to provide everything to build the capability.
A patient’s symptoms may not match the description in the book.
The team must make a decision in a split second.
There is always uncertainty with unforeseen challenges.
These moments expose a person’s thought process, ways of communicating, and how they adjust.
Capabilisense prioritizes these competing indicators of capability over static indicators of capacity.
The Beginning of Real Research is Data Collection
All research begins with something, and in most cases, it is the collection of data.
It could be information or data collection. It could also be classified as the construction of an organized dataset.
This work is also of great value; however, it only acts as a prelude to the actual deeper or greater work.
This almost always involves the process of making sense of and interpreting the information. It could also involve answering various questions, and synthesizing and integrating those findings to address larger issues.
Most fledgling researchers are not afforded the opportunity to participate in these later stages, however.
They engage in parts of research studies but are oftentimes ignorant of how the greater system operates.
Capabilisense promotes a wider understanding of the development of capability, not just of participation but of substantive engagement with research processes.
Research Opportunities Should Be Easier to Identify
In the current context, the location of research opportunities is, to a large extent, a function of personal networks.
This could be in the form of a mentor referral, an invitation to a professor’s research group, or even an informal discussion.
It works for some people.
There are a large number of competent students and professionals who do not have access to these so-called networks.
This results in the unequal distribution of opportunities.
There is so much unfulfilled potential in this regard, and this is a key practical reason for developing Capabilisense.
Fellowship Programs Require Improved Methods for Identifying Potential
Fellowship programs are designed to help train future specialists and researchers.
There is a lot on the line for these programs. They want candidates who will make a notable impact in their respective fields.
However, predicting future potential is very challenging.
There are clues in their applications, but these clues do not always show how someone will operate in a team and perform collaborative research.
This is the reason why fellowship programs depend on historical data on institutional signals.
Capabilisense investigates whether other forms of capability are available to ease and improve the accuracy of the given judgments.
Clinical Research Requires Collaborative Ability
Clinical research is rarely, if ever, done alone.
It also requires the participation of physicians, statisticians, research coordinators, analysts, and engineers or data scientists.
For a project to successful, there must be collaboration among people with diverse and varying expertises.
Working ability across disciplines is as good as having technical expertise.
But traditional profiles almost always fail to record collaborative ability.
Capabilisense wishes to better record the contributions of individuals in complicated research teams.
Research Training Cultivates Future Exemplars
Research training is far more extensive than just becoming proficient at writing research articles.
It is, arguably, the best training for teaching people how to think.
It teaches one how to ask pertinent questions.
How to question and critique underlying assumptions.
It teaches how to design systematic investigations to answer the question in a reliable way.
These habits will be carried on to others and will help exemplars in a wide array of disciplines including, medicine.
However, training opportunities usually only reach a small proportion of those who would benefit.
Research training would become more available if there were better systems for recognizing and aiding potentially capable individuals.
More Visibility Into Talent is Needed by Research Programs
The same problem is often encountered by large research programs.
Applicants are plentiful.
What is challenging is finding those who are likely to make the best contributions.
Standard performance indicators are suggestive but not typically conclusive.
What if research programs were able to access better indicators of an individual’s thought processes, collaborative behavior and problem resolution capabilities?
That is the visibility Capabilisense is attempting to provide.
Every Research Project Exemplifies Capability in Action
Capability reveals itself through action.
Research projects allow us to observe who asks the most, clarifying questions, who better identifies and resolves unexpected data discrepancies, and who encourages the team to move past barriers.
Such behaviors are highly informative, let us learn far more about capable individuals potential than a list of accomplishments.
Understanding and capturing those signals is the basis of Capabilisense
The Real Reason I’m Building Capabilisense
The motivation is very simple when you look at it from a distance.
A large portion of human potential exists in the world and is inadequately acknowledged.
Students looking for research experience.
International graduates attempting to prove their abilities.
Researchers who contribute silently.
Clinicians who provide outstanding care while looking unremarkable.
The systems we use to recognize merit were made for a different time.
Capabilisense is attempting to look different.
Not as an ideal solution.
Just as a better place to begin.