Across various sectors, companies are innovating within the digital media realm, from established media and entertainment (M&E) enterprises to Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS), aiming to provide streaming media experiences that cater to user preferences. In the medical field, conferences have long been essential educational resources for Health Care Professionals (HCPs). Numerous digital platforms, such as Medidata, Visionary TV, MEDICAL by AstraZeneca, and Healthline, offer medical education through video streaming and digital congresses. However, challenges related to content accessibility, fragmentation, and searchability persist, leaving physicians overwhelmed by vast amounts of medical information. Recently, Pfizer has partnered with Medidata to create video resources and investigate the potential for on-demand video/audio services for doctors, yielding promising results.
As video-on-demand and streaming services begin to flourish in the medical domain, traditional media and entertainment companies are accelerating their transition to the Cloud, striving to deliver innovative, personalized experiences for consumers.
For instance, on July 15, 2020, Comcast introduced Peacock, a streaming service designed as an over-the-top (OTT) platform that provides both paid and free subscription options for video on demand. In just one year, Peacock developed a streamlined, scalable, and highly available system using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Despite unexpected challenges, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games, Peacock successfully launched on time. By December 2020, it had already attracted over 26 million sign-ups.
Challenge
In 2021, it was estimated that the volume of medical information doubles every 73 days. Physicians are increasingly seeking ways to access medical content more efficiently and seamlessly through personalized user experiences. They prefer relevant content—ideally in video or audio format—that they can access in a self-service manner while engaging with a network of peers or industry experts. This approach could significantly reduce the time required to establish a diagnosis and develop an optimal care pathway for their patients.
The critical question we posed was: can we apply the insights and best practices from M&E to create a scalable personalized video streaming service for physicians?
Solution
Our approach would involve utilizing pre-built AWS media and AI/ML capabilities, originally designed for M&E clients, to assist pharmaceutical companies in establishing and managing a personalized video medical service that delivers impactful scientific content from an entertaining and unbiased viewpoint.
The service would provide frequently updated and meticulously curated content, peer-reviewed by an expert editorial board, enabling doctors to effortlessly access educational resources. Each major specialty would have its own dedicated channel with qualified hosts, who would combine clinical expertise with the ability to present informative content engagingly.
Based on a physician’s interests within a specialty, episodes could be edited to run anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. Doctors would have the flexibility to watch live streams or recordings from previous congresses at their convenience, on any device.
Ultimately, the content library would encompass various formats, including accredited continuing medical education courses, journals, research articles, podcasts, and webinars. Intelligent content management features would enhance content discovery and searchability.
A defining feature of this platform would be its ability to surface content based on a user’s past engagement, along with recommendations for related materials. We envision functionalities akin to Prime Video’s “X-Ray,” allowing viewers to access additional information—such as links to specific articles and connections to subject matter experts—while watching a video.
Building knowledge graphs will be essential for this experience, utilizing metadata to illustrate relationships between topics and enable the discovery of similar content to recommend to physicians.
Technical Architecture
AWS provides a comprehensive suite of services tailored for direct-to-consumer and streaming solutions, assisting leaders like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Discovery+, Hulu, and Prime Video in reliably delivering live and on-demand media across devices.
To enhance consumer experiences through streaming media, AWS Professional Services has created reference implementations and solution accelerators for direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming. This integration combines AWS Media Services, AWS AI/ML Services, and AWS Partner ISVs to deliver D2C offerings.
Pharmaceutical companies can establish a cost-effective innovation sandbox within weeks, allowing them to quickly refine and validate the experiences they wish to provide to Health Care Professionals through experimentation.
With guidance from AWS M&E experts, they can evaluate and optimize their streaming workflows as part of their content supply chain, developing a plan for a flexible, scalable, and production-ready VOD and/or live streaming workflow. They will also be introduced to the extensive advantages of AWS’s cloud capabilities for content production and partner offerings.
Using this D2C streaming media accelerator, companies can deploy a Minimum Viable Product in approximately six months by leveraging pre-built assets based on the following video-on-demand (VOD) Reference Implementation:
AWS Streaming Media Reference Architecture
This architecture comprises services initially designed for M&E, including:
- AWS Elemental MediaLive: A broadcast-grade live video processing service, enabling the creation of high-quality video streams for delivery to broadcast TVs and internet-connected devices such as smart TVs, tablets, and smartphones.
- AWS Elemental MediaPackage: A just-in-time video packaging and origination service operating in the AWS Cloud, ensuring secure, scalable, and reliable video stream delivery to various playback devices and content delivery networks.
- AWS Elemental MediaTailor: A channel assembly and personalized ad insertion service for video providers, enabling the creation of linear OTT channels using existing video content while monetizing through personalized advertising.
- Amazon Personalize: This service allows developers to build applications leveraging the same machine learning (ML) technology used by Amazon.com for real-time personalized recommendations, without requiring ML expertise.
Amazon Personalize simplifies the development of applications capable of delivering diverse personalization experiences, including tailored product recommendations, personalized product re-ranking, and customized direct marketing. This fully managed ML service transcends rigid, static rule-based recommendation systems by training, tuning, and deploying custom ML models to deliver highly customized recommendations to users.
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