Characterization of an Open-Access Medical News Platform’s Readership During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Retrospective Observational Study

BACKGROUNDThere are many alternatives to direct journal access, such as podcasts, blogs, and news sites, that allow physicians and the general public to stay up to date with medical literature. However, there is a scarcity of literature that investigates the readership characteristics of open-access medical news sites and how these characteristics may have shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVEThis study aimed to assess readership and survey data to characterize open-access medical news readership trends related to the COVID-19 pandemic and overall readership trends regarding pandemic-related information delivery. METHODSAnonymous, aggregate readership data were obtained from 2 Minute Medicine, an open-access, physician-run medical news organization that has published over 8000 original, physician-written texts and visual summaries of new medical research since 2013. In this retrospective observational study, the average number of article views, number of actions (defined as the sum of the number of views, shares, and outbound link clicks), read times, and bounce rates (probability of leaving a page in