Ralph Metson, M.D., who is a Clinical Professor of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, created SinusVideos.com to share his expertise in sinus surgery with medical students and surgeons. In the course of his career, Dr. Metson has performed more than 5,000 sinus surgeries. But many Ear/Nose/Throat surgeons and surgical residents have limited operating room experience with the more specialized sinus surgical procedures and need to consult a medical resource before performing such surgery themselves. Traditionally, these physicians would have to depend on a textbook or static online description of the procedure. In a recent MedHealthWorld interview, Dr. Metson described the benefits of SinusVideos.com and his vision for creating a dynamic, professionally edited and narrated online and mobile resource for surgical training.
MHW (MedHealth World): You provided both the inspiration and the initial content for SinusVideos.com. It’s an impressive resource that must require regular updating. What was your motivation to launch this site and what innovations did you bring to it?
Ralph Metson, M.D.: I saw that surgeons and medical students really needed a specialized sinus resource that was detailed, professional and conveniently available. Clearly it’s hard to learn or even to review specialized surgical techniques from a textbook or from observing another surgeon but that’s still the standard medical school process. I had created 20 years of video tapes of surgical procedures that I was using to teach Harvard Medical School classes, and when I thought about creating a new training resource the obvious first step was to digitize those videos and make them more broadly available on the Web. It was a huge effort to edit and enhance the basic operating room video footage and to add high quality, specialized narration describing every stage of the procedure. That’s where I saw a big vacuum in what was already available to students and surgeons –there were other surgical videos and online sites, but they were not edited, or in high definition, with each step in a procedure clearly narrated from a training and surgical perspective. We have spent thousands of hours putting together the educational content in the 80 videos that are currently available on SinusVideos to create a unique online resource. And it is available as an iPad app to make it even more convenient for users.
Another important factor is that this content is strictly educational; there are no distracting ads or commercial messages or registration requirements to access SinusVideos.com. Anyone can view the materials anonymously.
MHW: Who is the primary audience for the site and what reception have you had since it launched?
RM: I see a number of ways that SinusVideos.com can be of value to users, from seasoned surgeons who want to review a specific technique before performing sinus surgery, to physicians in training who have only seen others do a surgical procedure and are just starting to practice surgery. Since SinusVideos.com features a number of specialized procedures, it is also valuable to practicing surgeons with training in Ear/Nose/Throat who are looking to expand beyond basic techniques. Each video on the site is tagged to make it accessible to various types of users.
Finally, there are some patients or family members of those who have scheduled sinus surgery who may want so see in advance what is involved in having a procedure. And I have heard from physicians who recommend the site to their patients. Some of the videos are tagged for “patient information” and these use layman’s terms.
SinusVideos launched in October 2009 and with very little promotion for most of the past year it has already attracted over 30,000 page views. We are seeing steady growth in the U.S. and recently more visits from other countries including India and Russia. So it’s becoming an international resource for teaching sinus surgery.
MHW: Have you received any feedback from your users?
RM: We encourage site visitors to contact us with suggestions and comments and those are very positive. I attended the recent annual convention and the American Academy of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery which attracts over 10,000 specialists from around the world. SinusVideos had a booth at this event and we got a tremendous response. I received comments from a lot of physicians who are regular users of the site as well as from those who plan to start using it. That interaction confirmed that SinusVideos is meeting an important need.
MHW: Do you have plans for expanding the site by adding content or new features?
RM: Yes, I see enormous potential to make the current site more valuable and to expand to other areas of surgery. We just started offering an iPad application and that has been very popular. We’ll be adding more case formats as well as increasing the number of videos available. In addition to covering nose and throat surgery, I would like to expand in a collaborative way to include other types of surgery. This would be based on creating clear quality standards and setting up a process for other surgeons to contribute high quality videos to the site based on appropriate guidelines, review and rating systems.
Allowing surgeons to upload their own specialist videos would create a whole new paradigm for providing training resources. I know that there is still a huge vacuum in the availability of online and mobile surgical training and information resources and I see SinusVideos as just the first step in the process of filling that vacuum.
Dr. Cronin is a Professor of Management in the Information Systems Department at Boston College. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Erin Monda
