QluPod was proud to sponsor the 9th International Emergency Medicine Summer School by EMSA Macedonia in Ohrid this July. Here is why supporting the next generation of doctors is not just good values – it is good strategy.
Last month, medical students from across Europe gathered in Ohrid, Macedonia, for five days of emergency medicine training, shared meals, late nights, and the kind of conversations that shape careers.
We were there.
QluPod was a proud sponsor of EMSA Macedonia’s 15th International Emergency Medicine Summer School – held in July at Hotel Aqualina, right on the shores of Lake Ohrid, one of the oldest lakes in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Students came from across Europe and the Balkans – united by one question that EMSA puts at the centre of every session:
“Do you know how to save a life?”
That question is also ours. It has been ours since QluPod was first designed: how do we get the right health information, to the right person, in time to make a difference?
What EMSA Macedonia Does
EMSA Macedonia is the Macedonian chapter of the European Medical Students’ Association – a non-governmental, non-profit organisation whose mission is to improve practical medical education and connect students across borders. Their flagship event, the Emergency Medicine Summer School, has now reached its 15th edition: five days of hands-on skills training in CPR, haemorrhage control, airway management, and life-saving emergency procedures – the practical skills that textbooks cannot fully teach.
It is also, by all accounts, a genuinely transformative experience. Students leave Ohrid not just with sharper clinical skills, but with friendships, perspectives, and professional contacts that span borders and years. Fifteen editions in, EMSA Macedonia has built something that outlasts any single event – a network and a culture that shapes how a generation of clinicians thinks about practical, hands-on medicine.
Why QluPod Chose to Be There
We could have reached doctors who are already established in their careers. We chose instead to reach the doctors who are still becoming – because the habits, beliefs, and technologies that shape a clinician’s practice are often formed during medical school, not after it.
The students at EMSA Macedonia’s summer school are the GPs, cardiologists, emergency physicians, and hospital consultants of 2035 and 2045. They are forming their views right now on what good patient care looks like – including what role home monitoring, remote data, and telemedicine play in it. We wanted to be part of that conversation while it is still forming.
There is also something more fundamental. EMSA Macedonia’s focus on practical skills – on the gap between theoretical knowledge and clinical competence – mirrors QluPod’s own conviction: that health data only matters when it reaches a person who knows what to do with it. A monitoring reading without clinical context is just a number. A well-trained clinician with access to that reading is a potentially life-saving combination.
“The habits and technologies that shape a clinician’s practice are often formed during medical school, not after it. We wanted to be part of that conversation while it is still forming.”
Ohrid as a Symbol
It is worth saying something about the setting. Ohrid is sometimes called the ‘Jerusalem of the Slavic world’ – a city of 365 churches, a fortress, a UNESCO-protected old town, and one of the world’s oldest and deepest lakes. Hotel Aqualina sits directly on the lake shore, with Galicica National Park rising behind it. It is a place of remarkable history surrounded by remarkable natural beauty. That EMSA Macedonia has returned here fifteen times is not incidental. The environment in which learning happens shapes how it is remembered. We suspect the emergency medicine skills learned beside Lake Ohrid stay sharper for the backdrop.
What Comes Next
Our involvement with EMSA Macedonia was the beginning of a conversation, not a conclusion. The medical students we met in Ohrid are exactly the community QluPod needs to grow alongside: future clinicians who understand both the potential and the limits of home monitoring, who will be in a position to recommend it to patients, integrate it into clinical pathways, and push for the reimbursement frameworks that make it accessible.
To every participant of the 15th EMSS: thank you for letting us be part of your summer. The question – ‘do you know how to save a life?’ – is one we are trying to answer too, inour own way.
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