Osmosis is a learning platform used by medical students which provides an extensive library of videos, practice questions and flashcards. This article is an objective review of the question banks as well as the other features that comes with Osmosis.

Price

The subscription packages are $179.00 for 6 months, $199.00 for 1 year and $279.00 for two years. 

Pros

• The questions are high quality and great for content review
• The answer explanations are in depth and detailed. Additionally, the interface provides videos to the relevant information as part of the explanations

Cons

• Question queue quality: I think the question queue for actual questions (not flashcards) could be better. There is no ability to pause your question sessions and then come back to the same question session. So for example if I had a custom quiz with 10 questions saved in my queue and then I answered 5 and then closed my browser, the remaining 5 questions would still be there but the previous 5 that I answered would no longer be considered a part of that quiz set. This is rather annoying because I like seeing how I performed over a certain amount of questions.
• more daily quiz questions: The daily quiz currently only has 3 questions. I think Osmosis is working on this but I would really like to seem more questions included in the daily quiz to maximize spaced repetition
• Price: This resource is definitely overpriced

Spaced Repetition

• One of the features that separates Osmosis from many other question banks is the fact that it allows you to add questions and flashcards to queue and then reminds when you have to do them again. This is similar to what lecturio has which is a function which tells you which quiz questions are due for you on that day. This is an underrated aspect that I believe makes a question bank very valuable because it takes away the work of having to manually schedule your own reviews

Videos

• Osmosis contains videos which is very good for someone if they are an auditory learner. These videos are narrated in a very clear and concise manner and they do not include too much unnecessary information. Additionally below each of the videos that correspond to the lesson, Osmosis includes the links to other helpful sources such as Picmonic, or sketchy. This is obviously very convenient if you happen to have a subscription to any of these other platforms because it helps you more easily find that lesson in other places when you are done watching the video on Osmosis. 

• The lessons for every organ system are laid out in a way that makes it easy to follow the osmosis curriculum. All of the lessons can be easily found within an organ system and are not scattered throughout the platform. For many students having everything in a centralized location like Osmosis is ideal because it prevents us from having to spend time before a study session navigating through the site to find one video.

• Additionally, if you want to watch the video lessons in a particular order, there is a function which allows you to add a certain video to a playlist which then enables you to watch videos in whatever order you desire.

Filtering ability

• Osmosis has great great filtering ability when it comes to searching for topic specific practice questions and creating custom practice quizzes. To access the questions for a specific topic that you want to review you can simply click on the questions tab which is located at the and this takes you to to all of the organ systems and topics. From there you can more specifically filter the type of question that you want to review.

Question format

• The questions or formatted in USMLE multiple choice style questions that are structured as a clinical vignett. However the flashcards which are at the end of each module are fill in the blank.

Step 1 and Step 2

• Osmosis contains questions for both Step 1 and Step 2. Additionally, purchasing another subscription is not required to also have access to he step 2 question banks. After watching the video lessons there is a link to take a quiz with either step 1 or step 2 questions. 

Alternatives to Osmosis

• Some other alternatives to Osmosis include learning platforms such as Online Med Ed as well as Anatomy Bootcamp. Both of these platforms contain video lectures similar to Osmosis and contain a library of practice questions.

Should you buy it?

• Yes I highly recommend buying because the questions are quality, and the platform layout is very organized which makes navigating through information a lot easier. In addition the detailed videos provide another effective means of acquiring information. All of these features make Osmosis a very good choice for Medical students looking for extra study resources to help them prepare for their  school as well as board exams.