Presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting (#ASTRO19) to characterize the growth of the worldwide online radiation oncology network. Our work is ongoing, and we appreciate any comments or feedback!

1. PURPOSE / OBJECTIVE(s) RESULTS
• Social media connects global communi1es of
pa1ents, health care providers and ins1tu1ons1
• Twi;er is a highly ac1ve public microblogging
network with content in posts up to 280
characters called “tweets”2
• Hashtags are metadata tags oDen added to
tweets to allow users to search for or curate
informa1on on certain topics3
• Our purpose: To characterize the radia1on
oncology Twi;er network to iden1fy the digital
behavior of healthcare stakeholders.
• Hypothesis: This public radia1on oncology
community has grown and evolved in the last
five years since its incep1on in 2014.
• #radonc has grown rapidly into a
Twi;er-based global online
community of interest
• Increasing interac1ons through
#radonc improves public access to
radia1on oncology-related
informa1on
• More study is necessary to
determine if the community shares
accurate, helpful informa1on
• We analyzed all public tweets with hashtag
#radonc from Jan 1, 2014 through Jan 1, 2019
using Symplur Signals, a health care social
media analy1cs plaRorm4
• Metrics related to ac1vity (total tweet counts,
retweets, impressions), content analysis, user
characteris1cs, engagement, and network
analysis obtained February 2019
• Global Twi;er user data obtained from
sta1sta.com
• Data were summarized, and trends were
observed
• Study was IRB-exempt
1. Radu G, Solomon M, Gheorghe CM, Hos1uc M, Bulescu
IA, Purcarea VL. The adapta1on of health care
marke1ng to the digital era. Journal of medicine and
life. 2017;10(1):44-46.
2. Twi;er. h;ps://about.twi;er.com/company. Accessed
July 1, 2019.
3. Katz MS, Anderson PF, Thompson MA, et al. Organizing
Online Health Content: Developing Hashtag Collec1ons
for Healthier Internet-Based People and Communi1es.
JCO Clinical Cancer Informa3cs. 2019(3):1-10.
4. Symplur — Social Media Analy1cs for Healthcare
Insights. h;ps://www.symplur.com. Accessed
February 1, 2019.
SUMMARY / CONCLUSION
MATERIAL & METHODS
REFERENCES / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
#RadOnc: CharacterizaNon of the Worldwide
RadiaNon Oncology TwiSer Network
Arpan V. Prabhu MD1, Sushil Beriwal MD MBA2, Varun Ayyaswami BS3, Richard Simcock MD4, Ma;hew S. Katz MD5
1, UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Ins3tute, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, LiDle Rock, AR USA
2, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, University of PiDsburgh School of Medicine, PiDsburgh, PA USA
3, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Bal3more, MD USA
4, Sussex Cancer Centre, Brighton, UK
5, Lowell General Hospital, Lowell, MA USA
arpan.prabhu@gmail.com Arpan V. Prabhu, MD
Table 1. Annual #radonc tweets and users, Jan 2014-Dec 2018
@subatomicdoc
@sushilberiwal
@BreastDocUK
@ArpanPrabhuMD
@varunayyaswami
• Top topics 2014-2016 à journal club, radia1on oncology, and
radia1on therapy
2017-2018 à radia1on oncology, radia1on therapy, and
pa1ents
• Top added hashtags 2017-2018
• journal club (#jc),
• specific cancer diagnoses (#lcsm, #pcsm, #cancer)
• annual mee1ng (#ASTRO18)
• Network analysis: central hubs are individuals, advocacy organiza1ons, and
provider organiza1ons
• Top 25 individual influencers transi1oned from #radonc journal club
par1cipants to the wider #radonc community online, mostly physicians Figure 2. #radonc Network analysis,2014-2018
Figure 1. Quarterly number of tweets and users of #radonc hashtag, 2014-2018
• Total of 124,228 #radonc tweets by 11,740 Twi;er users, 2014-2018
• 284.3 million impressions, or the poten1al views of these tweets by users’ followers
• Among #radonc par1cipants, the most common countries of origin were the USA, the
UK, and Spain
• Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of #radonc users was 61.9%/year compared
to global growth of all Twi;er users of 6.6%/year in the same period