New ways for registered healthcare professionals in India to reach people on YouTube
Imagine a doctor's visit for every village, a specialist for every home. As healthcare moves online, video is transforming how we share vital health information, making it accessible to everyone, everywhere. With digital video, trusted healthcare professionals can answer our questions with clarity and compassion, ensuring quality advice reaches every corner of India.
YouTube is already a part of a patient’s journey, with people all over the world using YouTube to explore and find answers to all kinds of health questions. With millions of videos available in multiple languages, YouTube helps bridge information gaps and make reliable health content more accessible to diverse communities.
In 2023, YouTube had over 6 million uploads on health videos in India, clocking over 75 billion views.
At YouTube, we want to harness the opportunity of the internet to help people find high quality information. We want to provide equitable access to highly authoritative health information that is evidence-based. We’re doing this with a focus on two key areas – information quality and information equity.
Information Quality: Democratizing access to high quality health information
We want to continue making it easier for people to find high-quality information to help answer their questions, and we’re putting health professionals at the core of our efforts to connect people with helpful content. Today, we’re announcing new features that will help viewers in India find high quality health information on YouTube from healthcare professionals.
A few years ago, we rolled out two product features to help people more easily navigate and evaluate health information. This includes health source information panels on videos that help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources and health content shelves that highlight videos from these sources when you search for health topics. These features have been available to accredited health organizations including AIIMS, NIMHANS, Apollo Hospitals and Max Healthcare among others.
Now, we’re building on that work by opening up applications for registered doctors, nurses, mental health professionals, and health information providers to make their channels eligible for our health product features. This will allow us to expand to include high quality information from a wider group of healthcare channels.
The expansion represents a big step towards helping people more easily find and connect with content that comes from the extraordinary community of healthcare creators on YouTube – the smart, dedicated and creative folks who are transforming the ways that we share medical information. Whether you have busted health myths with Dr. Cuterus, found ways to cope with anxiety with Mental Health with Sonali or better understood heart health from Dr Shailesh Singh, there are communities on YouTube that are helping people become more informed, engaged and empowered about their health.
Health Content Shelf
Health Source Information Panel
Health Source Information Panel
How this works
Applicants must be registered health professionals, follow best practices for health information sharing as set out by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, the National Academy of Medicine and the World Health Organization, and have a channel in good standing on YouTube. All channels that apply will be reviewed against these guidelines, and the license of the applying healthcare professional will be verified.
In the coming months, eligible channels that have applied through this process will have health source information panels underneath their videos, to help viewers identify them as authoritative sources. And, content from registered healthcare providers will also be included and highlighted within health content shelves when viewers search for health topics.
Full details on eligibility requirements are here. Health creators in India can now start applying at health.youtube. We’ll continue to expand availability to additional medical specialties in the future.
Information Equity: Enabling Equitable Access to Health Information for Indic Language Users
To provide free and equitable access to health information and reach audiences at scale, we've invested in partnerships with leading hospitals, including AIIMS, Apollo Hospitals, Max Healthcare, Manipal Hospitals, Medanta Hospital, and Narayana, to inform viewers about health conditions. We’re now expanding our efforts to support more healthcare institutions to create and amplify authoritative content, covering more than 140+ conditions including physical and mental health, across Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi and English.
Multi-language audio is helping viewers across India's diverse linguistic landscape find trusted health content in their preferred language by toggling between various language options.
Effective communication is at the heart of improving people’s health, and we’re excited for this next phase in our work to help connect people across India with highly authoritative health information.
