ICYou, Do You See Me?
Have you done a search on YouTube lately? I recently did a search for the word “aneurysm” on the site and the image below shows my search results.
- Surgery on a Beating Heart, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxqj1BcBpIg; and
- Dental Implant Procedure, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO_IBtaH8P8
So how can we sort out the surgery videos with videos of a song by the musical group Nirvana? There is a newcomer to this market of online videos which might be just what the doctor ordered. [Insert corny laugh here]. Enter icyou, http://www.icyou.com. According to Shawn Jenkins, the CEO of Benefitfocus which released icyou, “There are millions and millions of videos on YouTube, but you have to sift through so much other content to get to what you’re looking for…with icyou, it’s purely healthcare from a noncommerical standpoint.”
It is widely know that patrons do a lot of their own research on conditions or other health-related topics via the Internet. One of the biggest problems with this is that many people do not know how to effectively determine the accuracy of information, and potentially risk their health in doing their own research. With icyou, we hear from the experts in healthcare discussing in video form, important medical breakthroughs to the latest diets, from recipes for diabetics to pediatric surgery.
Some examples of what can be found on icyou.com:
- Is Soy Bad for You?, http://icyou.com/topics/health-wellness/alternative-medicine/why-soy-bad-us+
- Gamma Knife Surgery, http://icyou.com/topics/alternative-medicine/gamma-knife-surgery-target-treatment
- Ways You Can Contract HIV and Their Risk, http://icyou.com/topics/hiv-aids/ways-you-can-contract-hiv-and-their-risk
Much like YouTube, videos can be tagged, given descriptions and can be embedded in other sources like Facebook, MySpace or other social media. Many users of YouTube are aware that the site has channels. An example of this is UW HealthWI, http://www.youtube.com/user/UWHealthWI. People can subscribe to a channel and can be notified via RSS when a new video is uploaded. icyou.com also does this -an example is Cancer Survivors, http://www.icyou.com/topics/diseases-conditions/cancer-survivors.
Here is an example showing the channels in the “Diseases & Conditions” category. Users can click on any of the related topics which will bring you to its channel.
Also notice the “related tags” - click on any of these tags to see videos across the site that have that tag assigned to it.
To see a list of contributors, go to: http://www.icyou.com/about-us-our-contributors.
Have you been using icyou already with your patrons, and what is your story?
