Frederick W. Kron, M D , Founder and President of MCI.

Dr. Kron is a practicing, Board-Certified Family Medicine Physician whose career includes training in Radiology, Internal Medicine, Flight Medicine, and Family Medicine, plus scholarly work in Geriatrics, Physician-Patient Communications, and New Media Technology in Medicine. In the last few years, he has given invited presentations about New Media in Medicine at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the Games for Health Conference, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the University of Michigan Medical School (Ethics Grand Rounds, Family Medicine Residency), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Hematology-Oncology Grand Rounds, Family Medicine Statewide Education Meeting), the Stanford SUMMIT Conference, the Digital Healthcare Conference (2007) and at the Michigan Family Practice Research Day Meeting. Dr. Kron was also honored to be an invited participant at the Federation of American Scientists Virtual Patient Roadmap Conference at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.

In terms of new media, Dr. Kron has written for many award-winning animated and live-action television shows, and for interactive computer games. He is a member of the Writer’s Guild of America West and the Hollywood Animation Guild (TAG) IATSE 839.

The breadth of Dr. Kron’s professional experiences in medicine and multimedia writing convinced him both of the need for a richer, more humanistic and patient-centered medical educational experience, and of the fact that new media technologies could help medical trainees to a far deeper understanding of patient-centered care than is possible with current educational techniques. Consequently, Dr. Kron founded MCI to develop a computer-based system that could train healthcare providers to communicate effectively and empathically with patients. As the system developed, it became clear that it could also be used for communication training in many other areas besides medicine (e.g., legal, sales training, management, law enforcement, homeland security).