Charles Hodge, Neurosurgeon, is an eminent neurosurgeon who spent nineteen years as head of the Department of Neurosurgery at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.

He is also the Chief Medical Officer for a startup company called vCases, which produces a virtual case simulator for use in the medical industry with the objective of reducing the number of erroneous diagnoses by medical professionals.

The company, says Charles Hodge, Neurosurgeon, is in its early stages, and is actively seeking new investors. "My current objective with v Cases is to achieve funding adequate for the company to develop the principles of diagnostic medicine in a form that is useful and attractive to use in providing lifelike patient encounters," he explains, noting that the virtual case simulator is roughly parallel in purpose to a flight simulator for flight instruction. "These encounters will allow students and physicians to gain practical experience with patients harboring both common and rare diseases. The end result will be better diagnostic skill with fewer patient errors, better care, improved results, few law suits, and greater satisfaction for the physician providing higher quality care."

This ambitious objective delivers its computer-simulated program over the internet, and asks its users to diagnose simulated patients based on a patient profile, and then work up the patients in the manner they believe is best for making the right diagnosis. By working up realistic but virtual cases, says Charles Hodge, Neurosurgeon, clinicians are taught to take thoughtful histories, make focused examinations, and order proper testing. In the end, users will make better decisions, improve their efficiency, increase their medical knowledge, and most important of all, decrease medical error.

The primary users of vCases, says Charles Hodge, Neurosurgeon, are expected to be medical students, residents, and practicing physicians. He also expects physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare professionals to find the program beneficial. Virtually all healthcare workers, in short, can expect to improve their confidence and ability to think critically by using vCases. Both the healthcare industry and the insurance industry, he believes will benefit from the lasting outcomes of vCases.

Charles Hodge, Neurosurgeon, was educated at Princeton University where he graduated in 1963. He went to medical school at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, did his surgical internship at Presbyterian Hospital in New York, his surgical residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, and his Neurological Residency at the Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York.