I came across this article a few days ago.
I am in Perth, Western Australia and planning on rolling out various podcasts for different areas of our Health Service. They will include Diabetes II Education and another on supporting youth sexual health issues.
It was refreshing to see another Health Agency utilising iPods and it has helped me to convince my health Executive team that run one of the Hospitals in perth to get started on our own. Clarian launches “HealthPod,” a new patient support program that uses iPod technology for bariatric surgery patients
Kind regards,

Sally
technhealth.blogspot.com

As a student of eHealth and a working mom I find medical and biomedical podcasts to be amazing and time effective learning while I’m moving. I listen to consumer-oriented medical/scientific podcasts (esp. Converstions Network – tech and biotech nation), as well as those on faith&reason (PBS – Bill Moyer), for qualitative points of view on the ethical and social impacts of science and medicine. Usually the interviewees are well respected academics, scientists, physicians, authors and business people with interesting and novel points of view. I find this is a great accompaniement to exercise (running usually) and I look forward to each session, and download. So, there’s the consumer perspective.

Thanks Krafty, for a great list!

Despite this major problem there are still quite a few podcasts where the primary audience is the general public. According to my list of medical/health podcasts at http://www.kraftweb.net/kl/podcasts2.doc (listing 52 medical/health podcasts) there are approximately 16 of which where the general public would be considered one of the targeted audiences. That is greater than 25% of the podcasts that I have found and I was extremely selective in choosing public health podcasts. I refused to include any public health podcast that did not give basic information on the producing entity. Some very good podcasts aimed specifically at patients are: American Heart Association Podcasts, Arizona Cancer Center’s Cancer and Healthcare Update, Blood CancerCAST, CVMD.org, Health Edge, and Johns Hopkins Medical Podcasts. is too time consuming for the average person (consumer or doctor) to sift through and separate the wheat from the chaff

I have to say, I disagree on two (2) counts. Firstly, a podcast can make information more accessible to those who might have difficulties accessing information online. Not all websites are ‘accessible’ and not all are W3 / WAI compliant. A podcast could have the potential to disseminate information in a more successful way (for visually impaired users) if accessibility online isn’t overwhelmingly possible.(*with transcripts for hearing impaired)

Secondly, with all the buzz around re consumer driven health etc / ratings comparisons etc , a podcast could have the potential to add wider,perhaps more
‘qualitative’ based subjective based feedback to info about different providers.An interesting contrast to overwhelmingly black and white text or tabular presentation.

The main question I have though about podcasts being used in a healthcare setting though is how you judge quality control or whether it adheres to a set of ethical guidelines? Do the same set of guidelines apply to a 5min podcast as they do to a website which is not ‘time regulated’ and where it is possible to read in depth info about ethical guidelines etc on FAQ pages? Seems like a black hole to me. You could always add a disclaimer to the top of the podcast , ie ‘we subscribe to the x principles’ and refer listeners back to the faq page on the website for more information ; but the caveat to this is that by their nature, podcasts are often standalone products accessed via itunes and the like – ie, listeners may not be aware of the existance of a website containing ethical guidelines or may not be bothered to look further.
In which case, maybe it’s a moot point, but perhaps information given in a podcast falls outside the remit of ethical guidelines developed for other online based initiatives precisely because of the nature of its format? . Otherwise, what is to stop me setting up a podcast promoting the sale of , I don’t know , snake oil as a remedy for Cancer?
The Honcode uses the term ‘website’ so semantically speaking do these same principles apply to a different format, albeit one accessed online and one which does not have to be accessed from a website itself (ie may be accessed via a 3rd party provider like itunes?)
I don’t know. How would you go about this.Revise honcode to encompass different formats or …?

L