1. Hashtags, #radonc and
Building Community
Matthew Katz, MD
Lowell General Hospital
4 junio 2015

2. Disclosure
 Founder, nonprofit Virchow Health
 website radiationnation.com
 No financial conflicts, leadership position,
research funding

3. Social media expands our reach
Bik HM, Goldstein MS. PLOS Biol 2013

4. Benefits of Social Media
 Patients/Caregivers
 Education
 Support
 Collaboration
 Advocacy
 Professionals
 Coordinate Care
 Collaboration
 Networking
 Education
 Career Opportunity
 Reputation Management

5.  # followed by a string of characters
 Acts as a filter for digital content
 Patients deserve access to accurate health information
online
 Doctors can help
 Hashtags can be a way to filter, organize content
Hashtags to Access Information

6. #bcsm – Breast Cancer & Social Media
 Weekly chats start July 2011
 Organized by two breast cancer patients/advocates
 Focus on advocacy, survivorship, support, metastatic breast
cancer, new research
@jodyms @stales

7. #bcsm – Breast Cancer & Social Media
 Joined by Dr. Deanna Attai to lead robust weekly chats
 Strong community with patient-advocate-doctor
collaboration
@jodyms @stales@DrAttai

8. #btsm – Brain Tumor & Social Media
 Modelled on #bcsm
 Organized by two brain tumor patients/advocates
@Cblotner_ @TheLizArmy

9. Symplur.com, http://bit.ly/1cAmuR7

10. Cancer Tag Ontology Use
 Use of tags doubled from Q2013-Q3 2014
 93% of use was is tags with regular chats
 As of May 2015*
 62% of NCCN designated cancer
centers tweeted 25+ times
 Top 4
Source: ASCO Annual Meeting 2015
* Unpublished data

11. flowingdata.com

12. Radiation Oncology: Back to the Basement?
M Katz, http://mayocl.in/1tqewx2

13. Radiation Oncologists on Twitter
Radiation Oncologist Country Twitter Handle Followers
Matthew Katz USA @subatomicdoc 10724
Shalin Shah USA @ShalinJShahMD 8608
Esam M Murshid Saudi Arabia @emurshid 7311
Colin Champ USA @CavemanDoctor 4527
Tere Migueláñez Spain @MsConcu 2558
Miriam Knoll USA @MKnoll_MD 2455
Ian Pereira Canada @IanJohnPereira 2280
Mary Gospodarowicz Canada @maykge 1407
Luis Moreno Sánchez Dominican Republic @radioncoluis 1381
Jonathan Livergant Canada @jpil 1321
Brandon Mancini USA @brandonmancini 1186
Jean-Christophe Faivre France @JC_Faivre 1184
Jean-Emmanuel Bibeault France @jebibault 1163
Virginia Ruiz Spain @roengten66 953
Source: Twitter, 2 June 2015

14. Radiation Organizations
Organization Country Twitter Handle Followers
ASTRO USA @astro_org 5823
Royal College Radiologists UK @RCRadiologists 5144
SEOR Spain @SEOR3 1177
RANZCR Rad Oncology Australia-NZ @FacRadOncology 497
SJFRO France @SJFROfr 272
ESTRO Belgium @ESTRO_RT 158
ARRO USA @ARRO_org 158
Source: Twitter, 2 Jun 2015
But what if we organized ourselves?

19. #radonc Activity on Twitter
Source: Symplur.com

20. #radonc can be multilingual

21. Two tags for strength, diversity, clarity?
#radonc
#radonc
#fr
#radonc
#al
#radonc
#es

22. #radonc can be like the radio
Source: T20, http://bit.ly/1cxE21m

23. Rudolf Virchow
“If medicine is to really accomplish its
great task, it must intervene in
political and social life.”

25. Summary
 Social media are powerful communications tools
 Hashtags can provide structure and filter health information
 #radonc is an emerging specialty-specific tag building
community
 Great opportunity to connect globally

26.  Virginia Ruiz Martín
 SEOR
 mis amigos españoles de Twitter
 Patricia Anderson (@pfanderson)
Muchas gracias