Streaming Media

Penn State Beefs Up Management of Streaming Surgery Videos

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/19/10

Penn State has added new management to the streaming of live and on-demand video of surgical procedures for training medical students and staff. Penn State Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine have begun using the VBrick Enterprise Media System to manage delivery of video streaming over the university's network. Authorized viewers can access the on-demand video surgeries from any computer on the network.

Faculty members have been using Sonic Foundry Mediasite for about five years to capture lectures and other events. The captured lectures are saved within the college's video library and accessed through the Mediasite portal. The surgery videos are accessed through VBrick's Enterprise Media Systems video portal. Both portal services provide credentialed users with free access to the video library, while also protecting privacy under HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

"Live surgical video has been a part of our curriculum for the past few years, but never before have our instructors been able to view the video, edit the content, and play back the most important aspects in the classroom," said Russ Scaduto, director of education technology at Penn State College of Medicine. "With VBrick, we are able to go well beyond 'textbook education' and provide the most innovative and effective learning opportunities to all of our students."

Editor's note: This article has been updated since its original publication to clarify some details in paragraph 2. [Last updated March 19, 2010 at 1:38 p.m.] --David Nagel