Abstract

Podcasting is a new technology tool for the automatic dissemination of audiovisual material to anyone with an Internet connection. For this and other reasons it is now proposed as a new service to educate and continuously update doctors, health professionals and medical students. International medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, medical associations such as the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, government agencies and health institutions such as the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, international medical websites, and a number of universities in the US and UK have begun to publish digital information via audio and video podcasts. A podcast is easy to use, can be automatically downloaded to a portable media player as soon as it is posted on the provider's website, and can be listened to or viewed at any time and in any place. Furthermore, a subscribed user can aggregate podcasts from a variety of sources. The purpose of this paper is to describe what podcasting and podcasts are, and how they are currently used to educate and update cardiologists and health professionals working in the cardiology field.