pathCast: An Interactive Medical Education Curriculum That Leverages Livestreaming on Facebook and YouTube

Global connectivity and awareness have significantly increased over the past 3 decades, yet medical education remains mostly unchanged in its delivery-local didactic teaching, supplemented with hands-on clinical experiences.

Beginning in 2016, the authors leveraged the livestreaming capabilities of Facebook and YouTube to create a platform called pathCast to broadcast pathology lectures to an international community of medical professionals. An interactive pathology curriculum was designed to address challenging topics across various subspecialties. Expert pathologists were invited to deliver 60-minute lectures using digital or glass slides or traditional slide decks. Remote (online) attendees interacted with lecturers in real time using the broadcasts' chat interface. Facebook's and YouTube's analytics were evaluated to assess the performance of all lectures.

From June 2016 to December 4, 2019, 53 speakers delivered 87 lectures representing 18 pathology subspecialties in 9 different languages (with 78 [89.7%] in English only) and from various geographic regions. The lectures hosted on the Facebook channel have garnered 8,333 followers and 52,171 views for a total of 386,200 minutes of watch time, and the lectures hosted on the YouTube channel have accumulated 5,891 subscribers and 292,735 views for a total of 50,674 hours of watch time. The lectures have been viewed by users from 1,093 unique cities across 124 countries.

The authors will continue to develop the curriculum to further disseminate pathology education on a global scale.