A VIDEO SHARING WEB SITE AS A NEW TOOL FOR MEDICAL EDUCATION

V. Dimov ^1*, K. Civello ¹, B. Jefferson ¹, K. Uzunova-Dimova ², A. Kumar ^{1 1} Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, U.S.A, ² Private practice, Cleveland, OH 44140, U.S.A.

Purpose
Video sharing refers to websites or software where users can distribute video clips, often with no cost involved. The usefulness of such approach for medical education may deserve further investigation.

Methods
A wiki is a web site which allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit available content. AskDrWiki.com is a wiki web site created in November 2006 at a large teaching hospital with the goal of enhancing the medical education of cardiology fellows, medical students and residents by publishing videos of cardiac angiograms and echocardiogram, and clinical notes. Ninety one videos were hosted free of charge on Google Video, a video sharing web site owned by Google, Inc.

Results
Five weeks after the start of the project, cardiac angiograms and echocardiograms have generated 1143 views on Google Video, 103 files have been viewed as least 2 times with an average of 9.5 views per video. The web site was featured in the British Medical Journal, Nature Medicine and in the newspaper The Plain Dealer. A formal survey of the cardiology fellows at the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins is currently in progress to evaluate the perceived usefulness of the project.

Conclusion
Online video is a compelling medium for medical education which until recently had a high barrier for entry due to the high-cost involved in distributing large video files on the Internet. The emergence of free video sharing web sites may provide a valuable tool for medical education.