The Road to Three Million: Unleashing the Power of Osmosis from Elsevier

We’re happy to announce that Osmosis from Elsevier’s YouTube channel has reached 3 million subscribers! This isn’t just a milestone for us; it’s proof positive that our thriving community of learners is continuing to grow and that we’re a step closer to reaching our ambitious goal of educating one billion people by 2025.

Let’s take a moment to rewind and appreciate how it all started. So, grab your virtual popcorn as we share our journey from medical student startup to the largest medical education health partner on YouTube.

How It All Started

Our story begins with our co-founders, Shiv Gaglani and Ryan Haynes, who, in 2015, were overwhelmed medical students attending Johns Hopkins University. Frustrated by the lack of adequate study tools, these budding student doctors knew there had to be a way to learn medicine more effectively and efficiently. So, Shiv and Ryan took leave from school to develop a learning platform to help fellow medical students.

It turned out that future nurses, PAs, nurse practitioners, dentists, pharmacists, and many others – including caregivers and people with health conditions – were also looking for a better way to learn. What began as a tool to help Shiv, Ryan, and their classmates evolved into the Osmosis of today: a comprehensive learning platform that helps people worldwide understand health and caregiving more thoroughly.

Learning Should Be Fun

One of our core principles is that learning should be fun. So, while medical topics can be complex and difficult to understand, we work hard to create videos and other content that breaks those topics down into short, digestible chunks of information to help you learn faster and save time studying. Our visual style not only helps communicate different concepts by grounding them with visual memory anchors but is also full of fun characters and animations that foster the joy of learning. 

Beyond simply preparing students for that critical board exam or acing a course, we’re also building a community of caring individuals committed to lifelong learning. A big part of creating that community is helping caregivers and clinicians remain passionate about their profession! We work hard to equip students with the tools they need to be effective in their careers and build core competencies that enhance their connections with their patients and colleagues.  

Since we posted our very first video to YouTube in December 2015, we’ve added thousands of videos to the Osmosis library, including the recent release of the Clinical Sciences library, reaching an audience of millions of current and future caregivers around the world.

The Making of Our Mission, Vision, and Values

It’s important to us to share who we are, what we stand for, and why we do what we do. Our founders started Osmosis from Els because they believed learning should be simple, enjoyable, and efficient. Over the years, the community and the team have expanded. We now have learners and teammates from around the world! And we’re all working to share our vision and make the world a better place.

Our mission is to empower clinicians and caregivers with the best learning experience possible. We know that medicine is incredibly vast, dynamic, and high stakes, so our unique approach uses scientifically supported learning techniques that work. In addition, everything from our approachable videos to our innovative learning platform is engineered to fit together perfectly.

Raising the Line in 2020 and Beyond

In March 2020, COVID-19 made an unprecedented impact on our healthcare system, educational institutions, government, and society. Eager to help, the Osmosis team worked tirelessly to create educational videos and offer expertise with videos and appearances on major news outlets from Osmosis CMO and former Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the CDC, Dr. Rishi Desai. We developed a continuing education course, which over 100,000 learners completed. We also worked hard to find more direct ways to help “raise the line” during the pandemic, and so the Raise the Line podcast was officially born, with Shiv Gaglani interviewing the former Director of the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Dr. Tom Frieden. Now, with more than 400 episodes, the Raise the Line podcast has hosted influential global leaders such as Mark Cuban (founder of CostPlus Drug Company), Arianna Huffington (founder of Thrive Global), and Elizabeth Iro (Chief Nursing Officer at the World Health Organization).

2020 brought additional collaborations, including working with #FirstRespondersFirst and Thrive Global to provide free mental health support during the pandemic. Through a partnership with Diffusion Studios (our custom video production group), we worked with the International Food Information Council (IFIC) to create and share nutrition information with future doctors, as well as partnering with the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD®), a patient advocacy group that pursues the identification and treatment of rare diseases. 

In addition to working with NORD on several rare disease videos to help people living with those disorders make sense of their conditions, we also launched of one of our favorite projects called (appropriately) Year of the Zebra. Developed in collaboration with Elsevier, the Year of the Zebra initiative offers impactful educational content about rare disorders that reaches millions of people around the world. In addition, Elsevier launched Rare, an open journal, to help develop and share impactful content worldwide. (Note: there’s still time to submit an article!)

Last but not least, 2020 was when we released our well-respected anatomy series, launched the Raise the Line Faculty Awards, and released a massive selection of free Spread Joy e-cards (the perfect way to send a quick note of appreciation to a colleague or mentor while supporting one of our core values).

The Next Big Chapter

There’s absolutely no doubt that 2021 was an amazing year for Osmosis. In addition to releasing a library of all-new, RN-focused nursing content, we joined the Elsevier family! By combining forces with the world’s leading scientific publisher and data analytics company, Osmosis has been able to reach even more learners with projects like localizing our content in Spanish, as well as developing a new library of clinically-focused clerkship content to guide our learners through clinical rotations, getting us even closer to our goal to educate one billion people by 2025.

As we’ve worked more closely with our new Elsevier colleagues over the last two years, we’re excited to say it’s just the start of something extraordinary. As technology evolves, science advances, and our collective medical knowledge grows, the possibilities are truly endless. We look forward to collaborating and innovating for the benefit of us all.

On Reaching 3-million Followers

To date, Osmosis videos have been viewed more than 276 million times on YouTube by learners in over 230 countries and territories. We now offer subscription plans for medicine, nursing, PAs, and nurse practitioners, along with dental, pharmacology, and general healthcare-related content.

As we mark the occasion, we extend our gratitude to you and our global community. We remain dedicated to creating the best learning experience possible while empowering our learners. To that end, we encourage you to keep us honest. Let us know how we’re doing. Feel free to reach out to chat with us on our website or contact us at [email protected]. We want to hear from you!

Here’s to the next million and our continued impact on healthcare and education. Thank you so much for coming along for the journey!


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *