Luis Fernandez Luque*, Northern Research Institute, Tromsø, Norway Vern R Beachy, http://www.youtube.com/user/vbeachy, Albuquerque, NM, United States Bill Woods, http://www.youtube.com/user/1HappyDiabetic, Bristol, CT, United States Lauren Parrott, http://www.youtube.com/user/laurenvparrott, Detroit, MI, United States Kerri Sparling, http://www.youtube.com/user/sixuntilme, Rhode Island, United States Track: Practice Presentation Topic: other Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: MECC Room: 0.8 Rome Date: 2010-11-30 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM Last modified: 2010-09-21 Free Full Paper

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Many of the health videos available on the Internet are created by ePatients who are sharing their personal experiences and opinions. These videos are among the most popular ones and they are being watched by millions of health consumers. For example, the videos published by the four ePatients co-authoring this abstract have more than half million views. Although a popular phenomenon, little is known about the motivations of ePatients in YouTube and even less about their challenges. In fact, there are no studies about ePatients creating videos.

In our presentation we want to explore the motivations and challenges of YouTube's ePatients through an interactive and participative discussion between the Medicine 2.0 research community and the ePatients. Four popular ePatients in YouTube, co-authors of the abstract, will publish videos about using Youtube for sharing their experiences living with Multiple Sclerosis and Diabetes. These videos will be edited and presented by the first author of the abstract. During the presentation ePatients and Medicine 2.0 scholars will engage in a discussion with web 2.0 tools such as YouTube (e.g. comments, video responses) and Twitter. The participation will be also open to other ePatients in YouTube that want to share their experiences. This discussion brings the opportunity to increase the knowledge about ePatients in the research community. In addition, it will also benefit the community of ePatients through the feedback from the research community present at the conference Medicine 2.0.