The AR Show: Justin Barad (Osso VR) on Passion, Conviction, and the Pursuit of Better Medical Training & Assessment (Part 1) | Otter.ai

The AR Show: Justin Barad (Osso VR) on Passion, Conviction, and the Pursuit of Better Medical Training & Assessment (Part 1)

Jason McDowall53min

Jason McDowall

00:02

Welcome to the AR show right dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology and uses of smart glasses and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. today's conversation is with Dr. Justin broad. Justin is the CEO and founder of Osso VR a fully immersive and scientifically validated surgical training platform. Prior to starting Osso VR, Justin became a board eligible orthopedic surgeon with a bio engineering degree from UC Berkeley, and an MD medical doctorate from UCLA, where he graduated first in his class, he completed his residency at UCLA and his fellowship in pediatric orthopedics at Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital. His experiences as a medical student and practicing surgeon opened his eyes to the many challenges faced by surgeons striving to provide the best care in the face of expanding medical understanding technology and complexity. These insights combined with a conviction to solve the problem led him to co found Osso VR. In this first part of my two part conversation with Justin, we explore his lifelong fascination with ways that software and technology can be applied to help people. He shares his journey of discovery, including some advice he got while still in high school.

Justin Barad

01:14

You know, you ask a college student, what do you want to do with your life and I told him the whole story. And without any real hesitation, he told me something that is just like burned into my mind to this day, as just, it's very simple, but so true. He said, Well, if you want to invent something, all you need to do is understand the problem you're trying to solve first. And then you'll be able to come up with ideas and how to solve that problem. And he said, and I think that the best way to understand medical problems is to be a doctor, to be on the frontlines taking care of patients, you're seeing it all firsthand. And, you know, he told that to me, and I just, you know, pretty quickly told him, absolutely not like, and I don't think I want to do that much school that much training.

Jason McDowall

01:55

Justin goes on to describe his experiences as a medical resident and practicing surgeon. He also shares the internal struggle he faced been forced to decide between two divergent career paths. As a reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show.com. Let's dive in. Justin, when you were young, you had a passion for video games. How did you pursue that passion.

Justin Barad

02:22

I pursued my passion in video games with great gusto and a lot of hours, I was introduced to video games at a very early age with Apple to see some early IBM PCs video game consoles like Intellivision, Nintendo, Genesis, Super Nintendo, basically, you know, got the opportunity to grow up during the console wars, which was a really great experience. And I just, I really loved stories and video games, I love the challenges. I love the creativity, I loved playing it with friends with family. So I was all about it, I spent a good amount of my time playing games and trying to discover everything I could about it. And you know, one of the games early on that I was really into was a game called life and death, which I don't know if you remember this from the very early days, but was basically a surgical simulation game. It's actually a lot like if you ever played trauma center for the we kind of similar where you're doing surgery, kind of gamified surgery on patients, but you're also diagnosing them and things like that. It's surprisingly advanced for its time, and I loved the game so much, it really made me want to be a doctor. And I thought that was what was so amazing about video games now that I think back on them. And then what we're doing today is that I was inspired, kind of with a career aspiration from a game that I was playing. So you know, I was playing this game life of death. And I was convinced I wanted to be a surgeon. So a cousin of mine is actually a surgeon, I had the opportunity to kind of go to work with him. And I was so horrified by what I saw, I decided I never wanted to be a doctor and that I actually wanted to make video games. And so I made a decision then that I was just, you know, really into computer programming and that that's what I was going to do. And so obviously, that's not where my road led me, but it's just interesting how the journey can go full circle on you.

Jason McDowall

04:13

Yeah, sometimes the pendulum swinging back and forth. So you had an experience, though, I think it was during high school, we had an opportunity to intern at one of the LA based game studios.

Justin Barad

04:24

Yeah, I was really lucky. You know, I knew some people that worked at Activision and basically got connected with an internship there, which was incredibly exciting. This was really right at the early stages of Activision starting to take off as a major publisher and, you know, they were publishing IP, like, you know, quake and Quake three, Tony Hawk tentu, which is a big favorite of mine. So I had the opportunity to kind of work on these franchises. And you know, what I was actually doing there was I was doing, scripting the the install programs that would basically install the games. On your system, and I was also doing testing and sort of like a second line where the studios would do their own QA. And then we would do an additional round of it and kind of submit bugs and had the opportunity on a quake engine game to actually get a game credit, which is, I think, unusual for a high school student for a game called heretic too. So that was really thrilling. And I think, you know, I was really in a good position to pursue a career in GAMING, thanks to that incredible opportunity. So still, to this day, very grateful that I had that chance to get exposed to what it's really like to make video games, especially at what is arguably the most successful video game publisher currently.

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