Sign in to view
member only content

Nowhere is the potential of image sharing more powerful than in the medical profession, where photos and videos of real cases provide infinitely superior resources compared to text descriptions. We have already seen Figure 1 — the ‘medical Instagram’ — which enables health professionals to upload and share photos of conditions, creating online discussion as well as crowdsourcing a database of reference images. Now, ReelDx is aiming to become the YouTube of the medical world — an easy to use platform for creating, sharing and storing videos of medical procedures and conditions.

Medical professionals can capture real, interesting cases using traditional video cameras, mobile devices or Google glass and upload the videos to ReelDx’s secure HIPAA-compliant servers. They are then converted into a common format and reviewed by the company’s medical editorial board, before being published on ReelDx’s peer-reviewed online libraries. The video cases can then be viewed by medical students and professionals to enhance learning and diagnostics.

In order to protect patient’s privacy, last names, medical records and other identifiers are omitted, and cases are only included with patient or family consent. The database is only available to registered professionals and institutions who sign up to ReelDx Education. Are there other industries where video sharing could prove a useful, educational tool?