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

A healthcare social media research article published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, February 3, 2015

Title
Review of Twitter for Infectious Diseases Clinicians: Useful or a Waste of Time?
Authors (alpha)
D. A. Goff, J. G. Newland, R. Kullar
Published
February 3, 2015
Journal
Clinical Infectious Diseases
Impact Factor
8.886
DOI
10.1093/cid/civ071
Pubmed
25652087
Altmetric
A healthcare social media research article published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, February 3, 2015

Abstract

Healthcare professionals (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 over 500 million active users who generate over 58 million tweets and 2.1 billion search queries every day. In this paper, we describe why Twitter is important, how and when an infectious diseases (ID) HCP should use Twitter, the impact it has in disseminating ID news, and the educational value of Twitter. We also describe various tools within Twitter, such as Twitter Chat, that connect and bond HCPs on a specific topic. For the ID HCP, Twitter may help teach the global responsible use of antimicrobials in a world of escalating antimicrobial resistance.

Altmetric

The Altmetric Attention Score is based on the attention a research article gets on the internet. Each coloured thread in the circle represents a different type of online attention and the number in the centre is the Altmetric Attention Score. The score is calculated based on two main sources of online attention: social media and mainstream news media.

Healthcare Social Media Research

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