A free, structured hepatology curriculum built by a transplant hepatologist — for medical students who want to learn more about the liver and be a step ahead during residency.
LIMES™ — Liver and Intestinal Medical Education for Students — is a free online curriculum and training resource in hepatology and liver transplant medicine for medical students at any stage of training.
The liver is the second largest organ in the body and the site of pathology in conditions that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide: metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), viral hepatitis, alcohol-related liver disease, autoimmune conditions, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Despite this burden, hepatology receives disproportionately little coverage in most standard US medical school curricula.
The result: medical students graduate without the foundational hepatology knowledge that internists, family physicians, emergency physicians, and surgeons need daily. The recognition of signs of advanced liver disease, the interpretation of abnormal liver enzymes, the understanding of what the MELD score means and why it matters — these are not specialty-specific skills. They are core clinical competencies.
LIMES™ was built to fill that gap. Twenty-two structured topics span six domains: clinical skills (liver history, physical exam, paracentesis, anatomy), interpretation and scoring systems (liver enzymes, SAAG, MELD), core liver disease (cirrhosis, MASLD, ALD, autoimmune hepatitis, hemochromatosis, Wilson's disease, vascular liver diseases, acute liver failure, hepatorenal syndrome), supportive care (nutrition, IFALD), intestinal failure and transplantation, and transplant medicine (indications, operative surgery, immunosuppression).
Each topic includes a clinical deep dive connecting the content to real decision-making at the bedside. The curriculum is designed to be used across all four years of medical school — as background reading, pre-rotation preparation, or a self-directed enrichment track for students pursuing hepatology and transplant medicine.
Each topic in the LIMES™ curriculum is built using an interactive component system designed to go beyond passive reading. Every topic supports three reading modes: Focus (continuous scroll with a sidebar showing per-section progress), Tabbed (jump to any section independently), and Guided (step through the topic one section at a time).
Within each topic, content is structured using purpose-built interactive components: FlipDeck cards for concept review, FilterCards for comparing treatment options or drug classes by category, ChecklistGate for working through multi-criteria diagnostic criteria step by step, ClinicalCase vignettes with self-quiz questions, and structured data tables for reference material.
Progress tracking is built in. Learners can mark individual sections complete as they work through a topic — progress saves to the browser and persists across sessions, so returning to a topic always shows exactly where you left off.
LIMES™ was created by Faruq Pradhan, MBBCh, FRCPC, a transplant hepatologist and educator. Dr. Pradhan's clinical and educational work is focused on advancing hepatology training at the medical student level — a gap he has studied through research, national task force participation, and hands-on curriculum development.
Dr. Pradhan serves on the educational subcommittee of the Liver & Intestinal Community of Practice (LICOP) of the American Society of Transplantation (AST), through which he has worked to expand medical student access to hepatology education, and mentorship. He is a co-author on the AST Fellows Task Force report published in the American Journal of Transplantation (2025), which cited the need for early and sustained medical student exposure to transplant medicine as a priority for the field.
He is the Faculty Director of the Combined Medical and Surgical Integrated Track in Liver Transplantation at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) — a four-year Enhanced Medical Education Track (EMET) for medical students interested in hepatology and liver transplantation that was cited in the Kobashigawa et al. (2025) AST Task Force report as a national model for medical student transplant education.
LIMES™ represents the next step: making structured hepatology content freely accessible to any medical student, regardless of institution.
Whether you have a question about the content, spotted an error, or just want to share that the curriculum was useful — please reach out to Dr. Pradhan directly.
liver@fpradhan.comLIMES™ is an educational resource for medical students. The content presented is intended for learning purposes and does not constitute medical advice or clinical guidance. Clinical decisions should always be made in the context of a full patient evaluation and in accordance with current institutional and society guidelines. Content is reviewed periodically but may not reflect the most recent guideline updates. Consult current AASLD, EASL, ESPEN, or current national society guidelines for clinical practice.
LIMES™ is a trademark. All content is original and the intellectual property of the creator unless otherwise cited.