By Luke Wilson 
Public social media has created an online network for healthcare professionals (HCPs) across the globe to ask questions to one another in order to learn from and share personal experiences.
We recently saw one such conversation among HCPs that drew on this global network and in their own words was an “amazing example of the power of #medtwitter“.
2:58 PM (ET*) – Jason Starr, a Gastrointestinal Oncologist in Florida, US, posed a question to his Twitter followers asking for their thoughts on the right treatment for a Stage IV colon adenocarcinoma patient of his.
Twitter Virtual Tumor Board Question:
Stage IV colon adenocarcinoma (lung only mets, RAS/RAF WT, HER-2 negative, MSS).
Has not tolerated chemo (usual suspects) well in the past. Recently progressing. Got the following ctDNA report:
Thoughts on treatment? pic.twitter.com/anUNiqrSxB— Jason Starr (@drjasonstarr) August 29, 2019
3:02 PM – To raise the awareness of his question, Jason then mentioned a number of peers who were quick to respond.
3:18 PM – Richardo Carvalho, a Medical Oncologist in São Paulo, Brazil, saught to clarify that the colon was left-sided and then later suggested a phase III clinical trial that Bayer was preparing for.
Ideally: clinical trial (Bayer has a Ph3 with Regorafenib plus Nivo in MSS). I’m really don’t know if this trial is enrolling or not…
— Ricardo Carvalho (@rcarvalhoonco) August 29, 2019
3:49 PM – Meanwhile, Shaalan Beg, a Gastrointestinal Oncologist in Dallas, Texas, suggested that the patient should go on an RET trial and called on Vivek Subbiah, the Medical Director of Clinical Center for Targeted Therapy at MD Anderson, to weigh in with his view. Shaalan, an HCP we have previously profiled as a digital opinion leader in the pancreatic cancer space, has a high peer following, with 25% of his 2,856 followers also HCPs.
3:54 PM – Vivek quickly responded and invited Jason to reach out to him directly to discuss it further offline.
Thanks @ShaalanBeg ! @drjasonstarr please DM me and will connect w you
— Vivek Subbiah, MD (@VivekSubbiah) August 29, 2019
8:41 PM – Just over four hours later, Jason tweeted again having recently come off a phone call with Vivek Subbiah, who had shared his clinical trials expertise.
Amazing example of the power of #medtwitter highlighted by the outcome of this post.I get a response from expert @ShaalanBeg, connects me w/ @VivekSubbiah who happens to be an expert in clin trials as it pertains to RET fusions.Within 4 hours of post I’m on the phone w/ him./1 https://t.co/zrVUJUpioX
— Jason Starr (@drjasonstarr) August 30, 2019
The conversation continued through the night and the following day with many other specialists adding their thoughts. By including the hashtag #medtwitter in his update, Jason enabled countless others to learn from the responses to his question and highlight again the power of HCPs using public social media.
This is just one story of healthcare professionals using social media. To discover insights from more than 3,000 HCPs who posted over 10,000 times, we recently published a study into the online HCP conversation about pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment in the US. To read the study and receive ongoing tracking updates you can sign up at creation.co/pan-can/.
* ET: all times shown in Eastern Time (local time zone of the tweet that started the conversation). Note that the illustrated tweets above are displayed for you in your local time zone.
