When he logs in to Google Analytics, Elliot Fishman sees that CTisus.com hosts visitors from 180 different countries. “More than 53 percent are outside of the U.S., from places as far away as Senegal, Madagascar and Bermuda,” he says.
As the director of diagnostic imaging and body CT at Johns Hopkins and the 2014 Minnie Award recipient for the Most Effective Radiology Educator, Fishman has written eight textbooks and more than 1,000 journal articles, and he has produced over 1 million pieces of content for CTisus.com (pronounced “CT is us”).
CTisus is an educational website developed independent of Johns Hopkins Medicine by Fishman and colleagues in 2000. Today, it has more than 100,000 registered users—mostly radiology professionals—seeking the latest expert information in their field.
“It’s our mission at Johns Hopkins to provide information,” says Fishman. “We have so much state-of-the-art material, and we share some of the radiology portion here for free.”
A main feature of the site is an image library with more than 200,000 CT scans. Each day, new images of everything from the brain to the bowels are posted and include Fishman’s diagnoses, ranging from an intracranial aneurysm to lymphoma.
If members have a question, they can post it to “Ask the Fish,” an online discussion forum where Fishman routinely interacts with his readers. Every week, CTisus features one new video lecture; it now offers more than 700 educational videos. Much of the website content also finds a home in one of nine CTisus mobile apps.
How does he find time to do it all? “I am invited to speak at different meetings,” says Fishman. “When I come back, I record the lectures for the website. There’s a universe of connectivity among all the things I do.”