Online Teaching Tool for Sinus Surgery: Trends toward Mobile and Global Education

OBJECTIVE: Online resources may provide an ideal forum for expert presentation of surgical techniques. The purpose of this study was to investigate utilization patterns of a sinus surgery website, SinusVideos.com, to gain insight into the needs of viewers. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective analysis. SETTING: Surgical teaching website. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The website’s anonymized analytic database was queried from 2009 to 2014. Quantified data included user demographics, geographic location, viewing device, page visits, and time spent on the website. RESULTS: A total of 428,691 website pages were viewed during the study period. Growth in viewership was observed each successive year since the site was launched. The mean time spent viewing webpages was 96.1 seconds for desktop computer users, 98.0 for tablet users, and 103.8 for mobile users. The percentage of mobile devices used to view the site increased significantly between 2009 and 2014 (2.1% vs 25.4%, respectively; P < .0001). The website’s viewership expanded globally, with a significant increase in site views from outside North America over this same period (18.4% vs 51.7%, P < .0001). CONCLUSION: The observed increase in global participation and mobile device usage may reflect new areas of growth for surgical education.