Leveraging Social Media in Medicine

Social media is one of the most prevalent forms of communication and engagement, and physicians and researchers are becoming increasingly more active on these platforms. In this video, a group from the Massachusetts General Hospital Corrigan Minehan Heart Center discusses how they leverage social media as practicing clinicians and active researchers.

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Transcript

Patrick Ellinor, MD, PhD, director, Telemachus & Irene Demoulas Family Foundation Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias, @patrick_ellinor: I think the biggest impacts of social media have really been related to both timeliness and connectivity. On our research or clinical side, with Twitter, you can hear about the latest, or late-breaking clinical trials at a scientific meeting. And connectivity, it allows patients not only to interact direct with researchers, but also with clinicians and the hospital itself.

Malissa Wood, MD, co-director, Corrigan Women's Heart Health Program, @drmalissawood: Every morning I actually look at my Twitter feed and I follow the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology and a number of other cardiovascular research sites. I'm able to catch up with the latest research and ensure it with my patients, and utilize that data in my daily practice of cardiology.

Sekar Kathiresan, MD, director, Center for Genomic Medicine, @skathire: Twitter has accelerated the speed at which information is spread. And so in the past we might wait for weeks or months before seeing a paper, but now within 24, 48 hours of something that is impactful, the entire community is discussing it.

Ahmed Tawakol, MD, co-director, Cardiac MR PET CT Program: I follow what interests my colleagues scientifically, and if they tweet about a very interesting paper, I'm more likely to read about that. It's part of sharing in the community and keeping in touch with your scientific friends.

James Januzzi, MD, Hutter Family Professor of Medicine, @JJheart_doc: With respect to the role of Twitter as I see it, it will continue to be perhaps the most disruptive and novel way to get new ideas out in the cardiovascular medicine space.

Christopher Newton-Cheh, MD, MPH, heart failure cardiologist, @cnewtoncheh: I think social media is also an opportunity to be able to engage directly between the clinical community and the patient care community so that patients can become more active participants in their care.

Steven Lubitz, MD, MPH, cardiac electrophysiologist, @steven_lubitz: It's allowed rapid real-time access to investigators, and to other thought leaders who weight in on particular subjects of interest that are cutting edge.

Jason Wasfy, MD, medical director, MGPO, director of Quality and Analytics, Corrigan Minehan Heart Center, @jasonwasfy: Ideally I would love to see social media as a form for physicians, cardiologists to engage our patients in their own care. Empowering patients to really understand the diseases that affect them and engage in their own treatment would be a wonderful use of social media.

Jennifer Ho, MD, heart failure cardiologist: And it's a potential resource that we can really leverage to try to understand medicine at a very fundamental level and health care delivery at a very fundamental level. So, I think there's a lot of exciting work being done in this area, really to try to understand how we can leverage technology to better deliver health care.

Refer a patient to the Mass General Heart Center

Learn more about the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center