I ditched med school to start a business

Shiv Gaglani finished his second year of med school in March, but his career as an entrepreneur is even farther along.

In 2012, Gaglani, now 24, and fellow Johns Hopkins student Ryan Haynes, 28, started a side project called Osmosis to help medical students better retain information. "Schools are training students today the same way we did 100 years ago," said Gaglani. "It's a cycle of cramming and then forgetting."

The company helps students augment their coursework by crowdsourcing practice questions, images, videos and news articles.

Gaglani and Haynes launched the company in August 2012 with 5,000 practice questions. In February, their start-up was accepted into Philadelphia incubator DreamIt Health.

The Osmosis mobile app launched this summer and has been downloaded by 2,600 students from "almost every U.S. medical school," said Gaglani. They charge an $80 user fee and partner with publishers, universities and other institutions for content.

Gaglani, who took a sabbatical from med school this year to focus on growing Osmosis, said he'd eventually like to finish med school. "Ultimately, I want to be able to inform and advise on health care and not just practice it," he said.