Meet Aline Charabaty, MD: The world’s most impactful Digital Opinion Leader in IBD

Digital Opinion Leaders shape the way healthcare professionals (HCPs) learn about new science. With medical knowledge growing at a faster rate than ever before, the role of trusted online HCPs in educating their peers, collaborating on knowledge dissemination and developing ideas has never been more important.

With the recent launch of CREATION.co’s DOL Finder platform, you can now discover every online HCP who talks about a particular disease online, ranked by the impact they have on their online peers, and you can learn about them through the content they post.

In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the world ranking for peer impact on social media is currently led by Aline Charabaty, MD, a gastroenterologist who is Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Medical Director of the GI Division and Clinical Director of the IBD Center Johns Hopkins-Sibley Memorial Hospital, Washington DC.

While not every academically credentialed physician makes a huge impact online, Dr Charabaty is a great example of an HCP who is not only highly regarded in the scientific world but also stands out for her impact among other HCPs on social media.

Let’s dive into Dr Charabaty’s profile on DOL Finder, and learn from the knowledge she has shared online over the past year.

The first thing we see is that DOL Finder ranks Dr Charabaty as number one in the world. Her IBD activity level, peer trust and treatment interest are in the 100th percentile among the thousands of HCPs included on the platform. Social reach is in the 95th percentile. From these headlines, we know that:

• IBD activity: Dr Charabaty is among the online HCPs who talk most actively on social media about IBD. In fact, as we’ll see later, she posted about IBD 749 times in the last year – or more than twice per day on average.
• Peer trust: Thanks to CREATION Pinpoint, which includes access to millions of online HCP profiles, DOL Finder is able to identify indicators of peer trust, such as when other HCPs mention Dr Charabaty in their own posts about IBD, or when they amplify her posts by re-posting them. We’ll shortly see why Dr Charabaty ranks among the most-trusted online HCPs by her peers.
• Social reach: With more than 18,000 followers on X alone, Dr Charabaty ranks among the most-followed online HCPs talking about IBD. Following is only one component of online impact, though, so being in the 95th percentile does not bring this gastroenterologist off the top spot. We also see that Dr Charabaty has profiles on X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Bluesky, and we can link directly to those profiles to engage or listen live to her posts on those channels.
• Treatment interest: Dr Charabaty talks more than most other online HCPs about medicines and clinical trials in IBD. While we know that drug mentions usually comprise just a small percentage of HCP posts about a therapy area, what HCPs do say about medicines is often significant. So actively posting about treatments contributes to Dr Charabaty’s online impact.

Now let’s use DOL Finder to learn more about the HCPs who appear to trust Dr Charabaty online.

We see here that over the past year, other HCPs mentioned Dr Charabaty in their own posts about IBD over 1,500 times! That’s more than double the number of IBD posts Dr Charabaty herself posted. And when she did post about IBD, her content was amplified – re-posted – by other HCPs 642 times. These figures provide significant evidence of how much other HCPs trust Dr Charabaty in the IBD conversation.

Further qualitative clues are in the names of those HCPs who do the referencing and amplifying of Dr Charabaty. The long list of peers begins with names including Shrivinas Bishu, Beatriz Gros and Joseph Sleiman; all impactful HCPs who also have profiles on DOL Finder.

We can learn about Dr Charabaty’s interest in medicines and clinical trials, too.

DOL Finder shows that while Dr Charabaty talks about many products and several trials, she rarely expresses a strong sentiment towards them. Instead, she mentions products or trials without adding a specific emotional response. This provides us with a clue that perhaps Dr Charabaty is a disseminator of science without adding significant opinion, when discussing medicines.

It may be helpful to know when, during the year, Dr Charabaty is most actively discussing IBD. Does she post only during congress events, for example, or does she remain active throughout the year?

DOL Finder’s Activity Timeline shows that Dr Charabaty is indeed active throughout the year, with a slight lull during the Summer, and some significant spikes during the year. The timeline also tells us that while she frequently reposts and responds to others’ content, she also originates her own content at various times during the year.

DOL Finder’s HCP profile provides a window into the mind of an HCP, presenting clues about what inspires them to post. Let’s look more closely at what kind of content Dr Charabaty posts.

The Hashtags view tells us that Dr Charabaty uses hashtag #ibd more than any other, followed by #crohns. Perhaps Crohn’s disease is a specially interesting type of IBD to Dr Charabaty; hashtags for other indications such as #ulcerativecolitis rank much lower on the list of her favourite hashtags.

An interesting top hashtag is #mondaynightibd, suggesting that you’ll find Dr Charabaty taking part in the weekly IBD conversation that takes place on Twitter and is actively shared on other platforms too.

We can also learn about the content themes that Dr Charabaty posts about, in the Key Topics chart.

We see here that Dr Charabaty talks mostly about research, data and treatment, which is not unusual for highly impactful online HCPs sharing science. Perhaps more insightful are the next most popular topics shown: patient experience and lifestyle choices. Seeing these topics among her most active themes indicates that Dr Charabaity cares significantly about the life of patients with IBD.

This would be an important insight if you were hoping to engage Dr Charabaty in a meaningful way, online or offline, or to find common ground for collaboration. As I explained in my recent article, if you want to engage a DOL, the key is to find the common ground between you and the DOL, and then focus on adding value to each other in this area.

It might also be interesting to learn whether Dr Charabaty mentions pharmaceutical manufacturers on social media.

We see that Dr Charabaty is quite active in mentioning pharmaceutical companies in the IBD space, and seems to express a mix of positive and negative sentiment towards them, too. This suggests that further exploration of her content may be worthwhile, to learn what inspires or upsets her about the companies she mentions.

If you are interested in diving even deeper into the data behind DOL Finder, we provide an optional add-on that allows you to view all the verbatim posts relating to a particular component. WIth this option, you can learn precisely what a particular HCP has posted about a specific topic, product, trial, congress or company.

Speaking of congress, let’s learn which congress events Dr Charabaty posts about, with the Congress and PAGs component.

We see here that Dr Charabaty was most active during Crohn’s and Colitis congress and ACG, and she appears to care a lot about the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. In fact, she posted 127 times about Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and a further 67 times about IBDesis, the South Asian IBD Alliance.

We’re now building up a picture of a senior gastroenterologist who cares deeply about patient care, not only in the themes she posts but in the organizations she mentions.

This picture becomes even clearer when we review DOL Finder’s list of most-referenced websites by Dr Charabaty in her posts about IBD. Among the top shares is bonumce.com, shared 51 times during the past year. This is the website for Bonum Continuing Education, a continuing education company focused on improving the care of patients through the development of high-quality educational initiatives for healthcare professionals (HCPs), which is also engaged in the MondayNightIBD chat that Dr Charabaty takes part in.

Speaking of MondayNightIBD, the X account for the chat is by far the most-mentioned account by Dr Charabaty when talking about IBD. Other accounts among her top mentions include professional peers, and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation; again confirming her interest in this patient advocacy group.

Now let’s learn more from the online interactions of other HCPs with Dr Charabaty.

The Conversation Network component illustrates the HCPs who mention Dr Charabaty in IBD posts, by specialty. In this case, the purple dots represent gastroenterology specialists, and hovering over each dot in DOL Finder reveals additional data about the individual and how many times they mentioned Dr Charabaty. The pink dots show HCPs who specifically focus on IBD.

So this visual confirms that Dr Charabaty is highly engaged with a very focused community of specialists in IBD and gastroenterology.

We can also learn about where in the world those HCPs who mention Dr Charabaty are based.

The HCP Locations map illustrates that while Dr Charabaty is based in Washington, and is highly engaged with other HCPs in the United States, her impact reaches much further afield around the world, with significant engagement from HCPs in Europe and India in particular. We can hover over any dot and discover who that HCP is that mentions Dr Charabaty.

Now let’s wrap up our insights with a look at the terminology that Dr Charabaty uses to post about IBD. The final component confirms that Dr Charabaty posts in English language, and in the word cloud from her posts we gain further clues about what inspires her content. Words including patients, remission, healing, care and elderly hint once more at her concern for patients, while cme, study and risk suggest an ongoing interest in science and learning.

So what can we say about Aline Charabaty, MD? This highly impactful online Digital Opinion Leader cares deeply about IBD patients, especially those with Crohn’s Disease. She has an interest in treatments, pharma and sharing medical education. She engages with patient advocacy groups and takes part in the conversation around a weekly IBD chat on Mondays.

To learn more about DOL Finder or arrange your own personal demo, please get in touch.