PEBMED
An Encyclopedia for Doctors

It was late in the evening when an Army doctor stationed in the Amazon forest received a call to treat a group of six native children intoxicated by a plant. The city-bred doctor was completely unaware of the remedy she could offer at the critical hour. The help came in the form of Whitebook from PEBMED—a wizard for doctors—where she found the right antidote for the plant poisoning. Whitebook helped her to accurately diagnose the intoxication and take the right clinical decision to save them. “We are empowering doctors and healthcare professionals to remain at the forefront of knowledge in making optimal and timely clinical decisions in daily practice across all specialties,” says Bruno Lagoeiro, Co-Founder of PEBMED & Digital Products Director, Afya Limited.

PEBMED is one of Brazil’s fastest-growing health tech platforms offering specialized applications and health-related content that positively impacts the lives of many medical professionals, helping them deliver invaluable clinical treatment. In July 2020, PEBMED joined hands with Afya Limited, one of the largest medical education groups in Brazil, to deliver an end-to-end physician-centric ecosystem of solutions. Afya helps medical students and doctors provide enhanced healthcare services across clinical decision making, electronic health records (EHR), e-prescribing, telemedicine, and patient relations.

PEBMED’s genesis traces back to 2012 when a team of three doctors, while in medical school, recognized the need to help medical students who were facing unusual challenges during medical examinations. They rolled out their first Semiology application with clinical exam content. Following the launch of 11 other healthcare applications, PEBMED doctors unfolded their flagship product ‘Whitebook’ as a reference for medical content in text, video, and image formats for about 10,000 different diseases across 30 medical specialties. Today, Whitebook has become the most used app by doctors and medical students in Brazil, be it for diagnosis, medical prescriptions, or studies. Currently, the ‘freemium’ app has over 130,000 subscribers, which includes one-third of Brazil’s doctors and medical students.

Whitebook, the blanket application, has multiple interactive tools like search volume that enable physicians to efficiently search and find the solution for each use case whenever needed, rendering the best user experience. Through Whitebook, doctors can accurately diagnose diseases by comparing the patient’s physical condition with the image results in the app during a clinical examination. In addition, the application has nearly 300 medical calculators that enable them to calculate various clinical scores without complex formulas. In a nutshell, doctors can invest their time more meaningfully to make improved medical decisions for patients across critical care, family medicine, and the emergency room. “It is estimated that the physicians in Brazil used Whitebook to diagnose and treat more than 37 million patients last year,” extols Ana Araujo, General Manager & Head of Product on PEBMED.

PEBMED also offers a ‘Nursebook’, with specialized insights that empower nurses to make reliable clinical decisions. The company’s yet another beneficial offering is PEBMED Portal, which embodies more than 200 different publications per month. The vast website provides news and updates pertaining to medical events, scientific journals, and health information. It includes audio podcasts and videos explaining new drug discoveries and recent findings in the healthcare market. Besides, the portal comprises quizzes that assist doctors in learning the most complete and current medical content.

In essence, PEBMED stands out of the pack for its excellent quality of content delivered by a well-structured editorial board. The company envisions developing Whitebook as a proactive assistant for physicians using AI and machine learning algorithms. Doctors can eventually conduct voice searches and find all the answers for making optimal clinical decisions. Pushing the envelope of endless innovation, PEBMED, in liaison with Afya, foresees new opportunities to expand its digital platform in the healthcare ecosystem.