Mayo Clinic Physician to "Tweet" Medical Research Findings

Mayo Clinic (@mayoclinic) will explore a new use of social media in medicine when it conducts its first author-led, Twitter-based discussion of a scientific paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal on Monday, April 27, 2009 at 5 p.m. EDT.

The discussion will be led by Victor Montori, M.D., (@vmontori) the Mayo Clinic endocrinologist whose analysis of several large randomized diabetes treatment trials was published earlier this week in Annals of Internal Medicine. It will take place in conjunction with the National Symposium on Medical and Health Care Education Reform, being held at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. April 27 and 28.

What: Live Twitter discussion of diabetes research findings published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

When: Monday, April 27, 2009, 5-6 p.m. CDT

Where: Dr. Montori will be “tweeting” from Oak Ridge Conference Center in Chaska, Minn. Participants (potentially world-wide) will be interacting using the Twitter hashtag #a1cflex. For convenience, participants may wish to log into the #a1cflex room in TweetChat.

Why: One of the challenges in medical research is disseminating findings to the broader community of health care providers and patients so they can evaluate the implications. Among the unique benefits of Twitter is that discussion is distribution. The act of “tweeting” with a link and a comment sends the information to a user’s “followers,” and when recipients reply the message spreads in turn to their Twitter followers. By holding a live Twitter discussion to answer questions about his paper, Dr. Montori hopes to accelerate the spread of the findings and increase understanding of their application to clinical practice.