Live Surgery Online
by Michael HoffmanThursday, August 10th, 2006
This week’s Newsweek magazine has a story about OR Live, a website that shows live surgery. This, I think, is a good example of the long tail, the niche market potential that the internet makes possible by aggregating users with narrow interests where together they rival much larger markets.
The OR Live site was originally designed to help doctors with their technique for particular surgery. Now, you have preoperative patients and their families using the site to become familiar with specific surgeries. What makes this work, and will make it grow, is that you have a highly desirable audience for a specific set of advertisers. Hospitals want to showcase their talents and will, therefore, underwrite this kind of production when they are included. Device makers and Big Pharma will use every opportunity to showcase their products in front of doctors and patients, and we know they have deep pockets.
Newsweek make this story into something of a medical story, but it fits squarely within what we have been talking about in terms of niche broadband TV. The concept is similar to sail.tv and any other number of niche broadband channels where you have an established base of people interested in the subject.
