Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A great article about CME, oncologists, and Twitter: "The Great ASCO Tweetup"

There's a great article written by Brian S. McGowan, PhD titled, "The Great ASCO Tweetup."  I didn't attend ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) this year, but if you were there, perhaps you noticed many oncologists were busy typing away on their smartphones. Were they responding to e-mails? Checking the latest biotechnology and pharmaceutical stocks? Or, were they tweeting?

Brian describes his experience attending the 2010 American Society of Clinical Oncology Tweetup, held during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June. Here's a snippet from his article:
Several attendees introduced themselves as being Twitter novices, others were known as leaders in integrating oncology with social media. The perspectives were broad and experiences were diverse — and this would prove invaluable to the discussions that progressed over the approximately hour-long meeting.
Although Brian works for Pfizer, he makes this clear in his article: I would like to disclose that I currently work for Pfizer, that the opinions shared here are my own and not those of my employer, and that this article was written as a volunteer effort to help medical organizations understand the value of social media technologies.

It's great to see a leading organization like ASCO embracing social media. I recently worked with a team of CME professionals to develop a social media policy and a social media strategy for a major organization. In general, physicians may be late adopters of technology like social media, but eventually they catch up with the rest of us living in modern times. Eventually, they'll end up on Facebook, sharing photos with family members and friends. Given that Twitter is still considered a "novelty" among most physicians, we probably won't see a huge movement in the Twittersphere anytime soon, but that's why we must be patient.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the post Brian. I'm optimistic that the uptake will continue. Oncs love to contribute; we can see that by the onc bloggers. Is microblogging too limiting? Could be. That said, situations like conferences will draw in oncs who want to engage in real time and give microblogging a try.

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