The Urology Tag Ontology Project

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Urologists have been on the forefront of harnessing Social Media for professional use. Urological Organizations and Journals have used Social Media to lower barriers for information dissemination [1,2] [3] [4].   Meanwhile, Social Media engagement at Urological meetings has been used to augment the experience of attendees and allow remote “attendance” for those not able to physically be present at the meetings [5,6].  Academic exchange through a formal Twitter-based Journal Club on the #urojc hashtag has enjoyed international participation [7].  Social Media has also been employed to assess the Media’s and the Public’s responses to news events in the Urologic clinical space [8], and guidelines for responsible and effective Social Media use now have been developed [9] [10]. Moreover, an extremely active patient advocacy voice has been growing louder on a number of the Social Media channels.

The Urology Tag Ontology Project aims to align hashtag use for this burgeoning Urological Social Media community. Utilizing this standardized list of Social Media communication descriptors, the project hopes to facilitate communication and promote collaboration in the healthcare provider and patient communities.

In creating the list, we crowd-sourced the Urologic Social Media community at large and were fortunate to receive buy-in from key stakeholders (Table 1).

Effective and standardized hashtag use remains an organic process that clearly cannot be dictated by a simple creation of a list.  Indeed, the current list attempts to strike a balance between existing hashtags that enjoy heavy use and those descriptors that key opinion leaders in a particular urologic sub-specialty would like to see gain traction.  As such, we hope for the Urology Tag Ontology Project to remain a “living document,” which is reassessed and updated on a regular basis.

Alexander Kutikov, MD, FACS @uretericbud
Associate Professor of Urologic Oncology
Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, USA @FoxChaseCancer
Associate Editor for Digital Media 
European Urology @EUPlatinum

Henry Woo, MD @DrHWoo
Associate Professor of Surgery
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Founder and Manager 
International Urology Journal Club #urojc @iurojc

James Catto MB, ChB, PhD, FRCS @JimCatto
Professor in Urological Surgery
University of Sheffield
Editor-in-Chief 
European Urology @EUPlatinum

Table 1: Urological Social Media Stakeholders Supporting Urology Tag Ontology Project

[1] Loeb S, Catto J, Kutikov A. Social media offers unprecedented opportunities for vibrant exchange of professional ideas across continents. European Urology 2014;66:118–9. doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2014.02.048.

[10] Murphy DG, Loeb S, Basto MY, Challacombe B, Trinh Q-D, Leveridge M, et al. Engaging responsibly with social media: the BJUI guidelines. BJU Int 2014;114:9–11. doi:10.1111/bju.12788.

 

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