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. 2018 May;19(3):600-605.
doi: 10.5811/westjem.2018.3.36825. Epub 2018 Apr 5.

Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAM) in Emergency Medicine: The Global Distribution of Users in 2016

Taylor W Burkholder  1 , Jennifer W Bellows  1   2 , Renee A King  1
Affiliations

Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAM) in Emergency Medicine: The Global Distribution of Users in 2016

Taylor W Burkholder et al. West J Emerg Med. 2018 May.

Abstract

Introduction: Free open-access medical education (FOAM) is a collection of interactive online medical education resources-free and accessible to students, physicians and other learners. This novel approach to medical education has the potential to reach learners across the globe; however, the extent of its global uptake is unknown.

Methods: This descriptive report evaluates the 2016 web analytics data from a convenience sample of FOAM blogs and websites with a focus on emergency medicine (EM) and critical care. The number of times a site was accessed, or "sessions", was categorized by country of access, cross-referenced with World Bank data for population and income level, and then analyzed using simple descriptive statistics and geographic mapping.

Results: We analyzed 12 FOAM blogs published from six countries, with a total reported volume of approximately 18.7 million sessions worldwide in 2016. High-income countries accounted for 73.7% of population-weighted FOAM blog and website sessions in 2016, while upper-middle income countries, lower-middle income countries and low-income countries accounted for 17.5%, 8.5% and 0.3%, respectively.

Conclusion: FOAM, while largely used in high-income countries, is used in low- and middle-income countries as well. The potential to provide free, online training resources for EM in places where formal training is limited is significant and thus is prime for further investigation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. No author has professional or financial relationships with any companies that are relevant to this study. There are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Gross annual sessions from FOAM users in the top 20 countries, 2016. FOAM, Free Open Access Medical education.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Global FOAM distribution- Gross annual session counts by country, 2016. FOAM, Free Open Access Medical education.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Population-weighted session counts from FOAM users in the top 20 countries, 2016 (per million people). FOAM, Free Open Access Medical education.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Global FOAM distribution- Population-weighted session counts by country, 2016. FOAM, Free Open Access Medical education.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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