Podcasting in healthcare – 2007 update

As some of my readers might remember, I ran a series of posts on examining the potential role of podcasting in healthcare. At the time, I wasn’t too keen on podcasting in healthcare:

• In my first post, Podcasting in Healthcare: Is there a future?, I discussed some of the challenges and potential uses of podcasting. My first thought was that podcasting would fill some need, but wouldn’t become overly popular because you have to listen to the episode, much like listening to the radio.
• Shortly after, I did a quick scan of the available podcasts on Apple’s iTunes media software, titled “Podcasting in Health – A look at Apple iTunes v4.9 for health podcasts”. At the time, there were very few podcats available.
• A year later, I did a follow-up titled “Podcasting in Healthcare – Revisited 2006”. My thoughts hadn’t changed much, but there were some great comments that made me re-consider some of my positions.

Recently, I came across a post titled “Will Podcasting Survive?” on a blog that I follow (Read/WriteWeb). In this article, the author, Alex Iskold, examines podcasting as the evolution of radio. Even though the technologies available to create and distribute podcasts are more widely available than ever, this medium of podcasts seems to have stagnated. He presents some data/graphs to highlight and support the idea that podcasting is stagnating. He gives four main reasons for this trend:

1. Competition with video and blogs
2. Limited applicability
3. Monetization is a challenge
4. Competition from big media

He concludes with:

It appears that podcasts are not picking up steam, and rather, podcasting is actually slowing down. There is not enough incentive for people to jump exclusively into podcasting because of tight competition from video, blogs, big media and a lack of clear monetization methods. However, it does not mean that podcasts are not here to stay.

Iskold’s conclusions seem to support my thoughts about podcasting in health care, albeit his conclusions are a bit more general in nature. Specifically, podcasts are “something you need to specifically listen to. They typically consist of a discussion you need to be able to focus on to follow”, making podcasts much like listening to a lecture. For some, it will be great, but for others (the vast majority, in my opinion), podcasts will not have much value, other than to be another resource that can be accessed.

Well, a year has passed, and I ran an update using Apple’s iTunes media software (v7.3.2.6) and was surprised at some of the results.

Table 1: Podcasts by topic using Apple’s iTunes on Aug. 30, 2007 (1200 EST) from Canada

I was very much surprised by the significant jump in informatics and the few new ehealth podcasts. I didn’t expect those numbers at all. My expectation was to see more health topics (i.e., health, ancer or cardiovascular), when in fact there wasn’t quite as many – granted 40–50% increases are significant.

Given Iskold’s comments about the slowing trend of podcasting and increasing video content, I wonder if video will supplant podcasting in healthcare. Granted, there may be considerably more podcast offerings on the Internet that are not hooked-up with Apple’s iTunes software.

In my own personal experience, I stopped listening to podcasts on a regular basis. I can’t say exactly why I stopped. All I know is that I didn’t find listening to podcasts to neither particularly enjoyable (even for purely entertainment podcasts) nor efficient. I was always irritated at the slow pace of the discussion, or irritated at the difficulty in jumping to the topic of interest. In the end, I decided to stop altogether.