Review of Twitter for Infectious Diseases Clinicians: Useful or a Waste of Time?

CID Review of Twitter for Infectious Diseases Clinicians: Useful or a Waste of Time? Debra A. Goff 2 3 Ravina Kullar 1 2 Jason G. Newland 0 2 0 Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases, Children's Mercy Hospital-Kansas City, University of Missouri-Kansas City , Missouri 1 Clinical Scientific Director, Department of Medical Affairs, Cubist Pharmaceuticals , Lexington, Massachusetts 2 Received 4 December 2014; accepted 24 January 2015; electronically published 4 February 2015. fectious Diseases, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Department of Pharmacy , 410 West 10th Ave, Rm 368 Doan Hall, Columbus, OH 43210 (debbie 3 Department of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center , Columbus Twitter is a social networking service that has emerged as a valuable tool for healthcare professionals (HCPs). It is the only platform that allows one to connect, engage, learn, and educate oneself and others in real time on a global scale. HCPs are using social media tools to communicate, educate, and engage with their peers worldwide. Twitter allows HCPs to deliver easily accessible real-time clinical information on a global scale. Twitter has more than 500 million active users who generate more than 58 million tweets and 2.1 billion search queries every day. Here, we explain why Twitter is important, how and when an infectious diseases (ID) HCP should use Twitter, the impact it has in disseminating ID news, and its educational value. We also describe various tools within Twitter, such as Twitter Chat, that connect and bond HCPs on a specific topic. Twitter may help ID HCPs teach others about the global responsible use of antimicrobials in a world of escalating antimicrobial resistance. - Twitter; social media; infectious diseases; education. New and emerging diseases require infectious diseases (ID) healthcare professionals (HCPs) to stay up-todate with their knowledge. In the past 15 years within the United States, ID HCPs saw the threat of smallpox and anthrax in 2001, monkeypox in 2008, H1N1 in 2009, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, and enterovirus D68 and Ebola in 2014 as examples of emerging diseases that require HCPs to have up-to-date and easily accessible knowledge to effectively manage patients. Traditionally, new information is acquired by reading medical journals and attending conferences. However, during an ID outbreak, acquiring information in real time is critical. As the world watched the tragedy of Ebola unfold, the world was also connecting with each other on social media to discuss and learn about this disease in real time on Twitter [1]. Founded in 2006, Twitter is a free social networking service that has emerged as a valuable tool for HCPs. More than 75 000 HCPs worldwide, comprised of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and healthcare consultants, send 152 000 tweets per day of which 31% are from the United States [2]. In fact, Twitter has grown by more than 500%; only 23 HCPs signed up for this social media site when it was launched in 2006. Today, Twitter has more than 500 million active users who generate more than 58 million tweets and 2.1 billion search queries per day [3]. Twitter has become a daily part of many HCPs lives, allowing them to communicate real-time healthcare information and medical alerts to a large global audience, including those who are considered experts or thought leaders in a particular field, and to solicit feedback. Twitter is changing the way people interact and learn. The always-on culture of today is accustomed to bitesized, on-demand learning. This type of learning transitions to medical trainees who have grown up with computers, smartphones, iPads, and Wi-Fi. They think about problems and resolve them very differently from those of previous generations [4]. The decades-long tradition of using textbooks to answer ID-related questions has been replaced by medical apps for smartphones and UpToDate, an online database [5]. There is also a need among HCPs to deliver easily accessible, real-time, pertinent information to peers around the worldTwitter can meet this need. Here, we describe how Twitter can be used to educate and engage ID HCPs and be used as a worldwide communication network. We also discuss how Twitter can be easily integrated into the daily workflow of busy HCPs. GETTING STARTED ON TWITTER Twitter allows users to write and read online posts known as tweets that are limited to 140 characters. Users follow other HCPs with similar interests, organizations, and medical journals. Users may tweet information from conferences in real time, share links to journal articles, and participate in live Twitter chats and journal clubs with HCPs interested in similar topics. Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not require users to mutually connect with one another. Twitter users follow others, and the recipient can choose whether or not to follow back. As displayed in Figure 1 [6], the dissemination potential of Twitter is what makes it so Table 1. How to Get Started on Twitter Create a profile at www.twitter.com. Create a short user name; avoid underscores, dashes, and symbols. Upload your photo so others can associate your name with your photo. Write a short description of yourself. Identify yourself as a physician, pharmacist, nurse, or healthcare provider. Be creative. Follow other healthcare providers who have interesting tweets. Follow infectious diseases organizations. Follow medical journals. Send your first tweet. valuable in terms of the number of people it is able to reach and impact. Table 1 describes how to get started on Twitter. An in-depth description of how to get started on Twitter has been previously described [7, 8]. We recommend HCPs always identify themselves on Twitter as a physician, pharmacist, nurse, or HCP. Tweets from HCPs hold a greater level of authenticity and trust [9]. Twitters primary access point is the companys website, www. twitter.com. Users must first go to this site to register and create their profile. There are additional ways to access Twitter in the from Oxford University Press [6]. Figure 2. Twitter symbols. is read, it may be retweeted by clicking on the retweet icon. One can search Twitter for specific ID topics or conferences using a hashtag (#; Table 4). For example, #Ebola will populate tweets that include the hashtag Ebola. This is a good way to find experts who tweet on a particular topic. When someone interesting is found, a click on follow will ensure that their tweets appear in an individuals timeline of tweets. Symplur, a Twitter analytics website for healthcare hashtags, started the Healthcare hospital or office and while on the go. Twitter makes official apps for all major smartphones that add functionality and features that Hashtag Project. They grouped more than 5000 disease and appeal to different users. Popular apps on iOS (iPhone and iPad) include Tweetbot 3, Twitterific 5, and Echofon [10]; for Android medical (...truncated)