What on Earth is YouTube Health?

Dr. Siobhan Deshauer shot her first YouTube video in 2017, as a creative project during her residency in internal medicine at McMaster University. And she kept at it.“I wanted to share what I was learning, although I thought it would be with a close circle of friends and family. And documenting the journey, almost like a journal, to reflect on what I was going through,” says Dr. Deshauer, a former violinist using the handle Violin MD.Her “Day in the Life of a Doctor” series started to go viral, and she recorded herself shadowing other health professionals, then did a “Medical Mysteries” series to demystify the diagnostic process. “People think, ‘Why didn’t you just order that test from the beginning?’ But that’s not how things work.”Dr. Deshauer now works as a locum in internal medicine and rheumatology in the GTA and in remote and rural Ontario communities. She carves out work hours for her channel, which has over a million subscribers and 212 videos. “I see this as being part of my job. As doctors, part of what we do is communicate information and empower patients and families to have knowledge to make the best decisions for their health.”Now, she’s the first licensed healthcare provider accredited by YouTube Health Canada, which gains her access to a set of health product features. That includes a label saying “From an accredited healthcare provider of Canada” (the label links out to a page that makes it clear how it defines a credible health source, citing the World Health Organization and others). YouTube Health also offers up such creators’ content when Canadians search for relevant health information.It’s part of a new suite of features from YouTube Health in Canada and elsewhere around the world, to help make the platform a more reliable source of health information. The program has been offered to healthcare organizations for some time and opened up to individual accredited providers in May. Anyone can apply if they meet the criteria: that includes following certain information sharing standards, having a minimum of views or watch hours and not being affiliated with for-profit health companies.“YouTube Health’s mission is to make high-quality health information accessible to everyone. Our approach is to work with local health partners to raise up authoritative health information, and to remove content that is misleading or can cause real-world harm,” said a YouTube spokesperson in an email. “We want to make it as easy as possible for people to find authoritative and credible health information on YouTube, and expanding YouTube Health to licensed Canadian doctors, nurses, psychologists and health organizations is part of our effort in ensuring that evidence-based authoritative sources and content are easily available to Canadians.”YouTube, which is owned by Google, had over 110 billion views on health-related videos globally in 2021; it reports that 92% of Canadian users use the site to gather information and knowledge.The social media site began this approach by talking to large organizations last fall, granting them accreditation and access to health features, but also working with them to develop original health information content. Partners include the Ottawa Hospital, which was approached by YouTube to produce 36 videos in French and English.“We knew just from looking at our website analytics that the demand for health information among our French audiences is very high,” said Melanie Gruer, chief communications officer for the hospital. She says a web-based article the hospital produced in 2021 about Type 2 diabetes has garnered 780,000 views, and it’s still being read.The hospital’s videos for YouTube, which come out every Saturday and feature a doctor from the hospital talking about health conditions, have performed well. Some videos have a few hundred hits while the release of “Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) : Symptoms, diagnosis and treatment” happened to coincide with news of King Charles being treated for an enlarged prostate and his subsequent cancer diagnosis. It now has over two million views. Some French videos have also gone viral with “Comprendre la méningite : Ses symptômes, ses causes, ses risques et son traitement” racking up a million views. (The English version about meningitis has under 200.)Gruer says the relationship has been symbiotic: YouTube gets French content from a trusted source fill while the Ottawa Hospital gains insights about making successful videos. “They’ve been great at helping us understand what works on YouTube and what doesn’t,” says Gruer. These can be simple but important insights, such as keeping videos short.The hospital has seen its subscription numbers increase. “It’s a long game for us. This is a way for us to establish ourselves on the platform and build an audience,” says Gruer. “Hospitals are always looking for ways to improve access for our patients to health resources.”The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) was similarly approached by YouTube last fall and agreed to become accredited and also produce videos. (YouTube has not disclosed how many partners it has in these project but says it’s also working with Horizon Health Network in New Brunswick and Toronto’s University Health Network. It’s also been reported that Sick Kids is on this list, and it indeed has its videos labelled as being from an accredited source.)“Whenever there’s an opportunity to partner with a social media company, you get a different reach. You get different information about how to tailor your resources,” says Dr. Sanjeev Sockalingam, chief medical officer and vice president of education at CAMH.He says the centre’s web-based mental health information has done well, particularly seeing good uptake during the pandemic, but this partnership offered new insights and access to a bigger audience, which aids it in pushing back against misinformation.CAMH is producing around 40 videos, which are in English and French, many of which in “An Expert Explains” format. Its video on narcissistic personality disorder in French has a whopping 3.8 million views, while most have a few hundred.In future, Dr. Sockalingam says CAMH may expand the number of videos made via the partnership, as it and YouTube are assessing where there are information gaps for the public.“It’s an opportunity for organizations to really think about new ways of getting information out there,” he says. “We have our web site, we have our usual channels, but going through a company like YouTube helps us access a whole new audience and find out what people might be searching for, and get credible information out to patients and families.

What on Earth is YouTube Health?

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