ABSTRACT
Introduction Free open-access medical education (FOAMed) resources have proliferated inthe past decade, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this paradigm shift towardsdigital educational platforms. Liver Fellow Network (LFN) was borne out of a perceivedneed for such resources in hepatology. LFN is an educational website established by gastroenterology(GI) and hepatology fellows, containing original content produced by trainees andpeer-reviewed by faculty advisors. LFN’s content spans a variety of topics and formats (e.g.traditional blog posts, infographics, videos and a podcast). We aimed to assess 1) thedemographics of users and 2) the website’s educational impact.Methods A voluntary, anonymous, web-based survey comprised of 22 demographic andLikert-type questions written in English was disseminated via Twitter and to email subscribersvia MailChimp. No incentives were provided. Responses were collected between 11/3-11/25/20. Additional data was collected from the LFN Twitter account and Google Analytics.This project received a formal determination of program evaluation status according toUniversity of Illinois at Chicago institutional policy;this initiative was deemed not humansubjects research and therefore was not reviewed by the IRB.Results A total of 65 individuals completed the survey. Respondents were primarily 31-45years old (61.5%) and male (61.5%), and spanned all continents except Antarctica, with50.8% residing in the United States (U.S.). GI fellows and attendings comprised 33.8% and30.8%, respectively. According to the website’s Analytics data, 53.1% of all sessions originatedin the U.S., but LFN users span a total of 113 countries (Figure 1). The vast majority ofsurvey respondents agreed that LFN was educationally valuable (Table 1). Additionally, the majority agreed that each of the five core educational series were valuable;that they usedLFN to teach;that they felt more comfortable managing liver disease because of LFN;andthat LFN led to changes in their clinical practice. In 6 months, 8,651 unique users visitedthe LFN website and 2,460 individuals followed the LFN Twitter account. The mean numberof tweet impressions was 120,060 (+/- 51,505) per month with a mean of 3,526 (+/- 1750)profile visits per month. A total of 36 tweets advertising content have garnered a medianof 8,328 (5,166-11,897) impressions/tweet and 761 (391-1,275) engagements/tweet.Discussion LFN has a diverse audience with learners that span six continents. Early surveydata suggest that LFN is easy to use, provides valuable educational information, influencesclinical decision-making, and is utilized as a teaching aid. FOAMed harnesses technologyto improve the training of the next generation of medical providers. LFN stands as anexample of the potential reach of such platforms and how content can be sustainably createdand disseminated.(Figure Presented)Figure 1. Geographic distribution of Liver Fellow Network website users (Table Presented)Table 1. Assessment of Liver Fellow Network’s Educational Impact (n=65)