BUSINESSPodcasting primer: All you need is the InternetFor both spreading and listening to information on issues affecting doctors, more physicians are turning to podcasts -- downloadable audio and visual files.By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. May 8, 2006. Long-time friends and Tulane University School of Medicine classmates Quinten Black, MD, and John O'Connor, MD, radiation oncologists in Asheville, N.C., and New Orleans, respectively, were talking last year about how their patients had trouble retaining the information they or referring physicians had given them about their cancer. So they decided to try to speak to patients through a device more of them were using -- the iPod. Drs. Black and O'Connor did this by creating Web-based audio files that have come to be known as podcasts. Podcasts are audio and video files distributed over the Internet. Anyone with a computer, microphone, webcam (if you want to make a video podcast) and access to the Internet can create and easily share podcasts with anybody in the world. Pretty much anyone with Internet access can download them easily. Patients can listen to Drs. Black and O'Connor's podcasts on the physicians' Web site, or download files to their portable computer audio file player. The physicians have three podcasts on their Web site, Cancercast.com, which is getting about 1,000 hits per day. "It's ... something we feel is important and interesting, and we want to keep doing it because it can help serve our own patients. ...[It's] gratifying to see that this many people are downloading it," Dr. Black said. Besides individual physicians, health care organizations such as the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins, medical publishers and medical societies are podcasting to keep doctors up to date about new studies, help them obtain advice about running their practice efficiently and educate patients. Continuing medical education also is available via podcasts. [...]Full text of AMNews content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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