Development of a Virtual Platform to Combat Global Inequity in Oncological Education

At the onset of the pandemic, conventional medical education was disrupted, forcing an unprecedented exploration of virtual learning. Social media and online lectures continue to provide promising platforms that enhance learning, address inequities, and reach a wider global audience. MedNews Week is an online medical platform aimed at combating medical misinformation, especially within oncology, by sharing the latest developments in the field from primary sources through its programming. This platform features weekly keynote conferences featuring internationally renowned oncologists before a diverse mainstream global audience who provide the latest updates in hematology oncology, including malignant hematology, rare hematological malignancies and the impact of COVID-19 on patients with blood cancers. This platform is unique because it utilizes social media to bring these prominent global luminaries to worldwide audiences. Here we report the uptake and impact of this new virtual emerging platform.

During the past 6 months, MedNews Week invited over 22 distinguished oncologists as Keynote Speakers. They all possessed high academic achievements in oncology research (as evidenced by their citation history and h-index), and thus are considered global leaders in the field. All members of MedNews Week promoted each Keynote lecture for a week across Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn social media platforms. All events were streamed online across these social media platforms, Clubhouse and YouTube. For this study, lecture topics were divided into 5 groups: Biomarkers & immuno-oncology, rare heme malignancies, cancer & COVID-19, myeloproliferative disease, and microbiome & immunotherapies. To assess the sustainability of this platform, the number of attendees was assessed based on this classification and between topics of rare-hematological and non-rare hematological malignancies.

From January to June 2022, the total number of attendees was 72,136, and the overall number of attendees per lecture has been steadily increasing. All of the keynote speakers had achieved outstanding academic achievements in oncology. The mean (SD) of the number of citations of all speakers was 22351.86 (26723.39). MedNews Week Twitter promotions generated over 95,375 impressions with a mean (SD) of 4335.409 (3006.866). It was also observed that the number of tweet impressions per speaker had increased over the past 6 months. The number of attendees has consistently been between 2,000 to 4,000 across all Keynote Lecture topics. The most attendees were present for myeloproliferative disease lectures (Figure 1a). However, there has not been a decline in the number of attendees for Keynote lectures when comparing rare with non-rare hematological malignancies (Figure 1b).

In conclusion, results show that MedNews Week has developed a baseline audience and this platform has maintained steady and continued growth. Although the pandemic has further widened inequities, including in education, MedNews Week's platform has strived to narrow this gap, especially in developing and lower socioeconomic regions, by connecting global leaders in the field to mainstream audiences consisting of patients and patient advocates. Thus, this platform represents a promising approach to impact global education in hematology oncology.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.