Social media is my passion project: Dr Amar Puttanna

Transcript

I’m so excited to be here today with Dr. Amar Putana, consultant diabetologist, founder of Goggledocs, is a kind of omnichannel social media education company. Also got a role as national advisor for clinical engagement for Sanofi. I’m really excited to hear Dr. Putana more about your work and particularly how social media impacts that. But to kick off, well, firstly, welcome.

Thanks. Thanks Daniel. Pleasure to be here and a pleasure to be invited to talk about myself, I guess.

Thanks for being one of the brave few on our early series. Could you first of all describe your current location? What’s the view from your chair?

The view from my chair is a messy room and grey skies, unfortunately, a tree and some houses. So not the best view, would say. But again, living in kind of urban environment, what can you say?

I think so many of the conversations that we have in the UK start off with a conversation that touches on the weather.

You have to in the UK, you can’t not, unfortunately, or fortunately.

So tell us a bit more, I gave a very brief intro there. us a bit more about your background, what you do, how long you’ve done it and how did you get into this?

Yeah, so I guess the journey in a way starts way back in 20, well, I just as a medical student where I knew, I figured out that diabetes and endocrinology hormones, so diabetes and hormones was kind of the path for me. And I just kind of built on that and kind of did what I can, you know, develop a passion for kind of firstly the subject diabetes, but then actually when I became a trainee in the area and training, I realized more about the importance of education. I always liked education, but actually learning a bit more about kind of cutting edge developments in this specialty, what’s going on, keeping abreast of all the key kind of areas and topics that were coming up and kind of really, I guess, nerding out a bit speaking on these areas. It kind of helped me attain the next level of kind of engagement with a specialty and with diabetes, especially.

So there was a sort of personal passion to just to kind of keep learning, because it was an area that was changing fast or an area where you felt there was a lot yet to be discovered? Or what was driving that?

I mean, I’ve always always like my mind being stimulated. And I can that goes hand in hand with social media, there’s always something happening. So I think for me, it was realizing, you know, stuff you’re taught, actually, there’s more stuff, you can be taught stuff historically, what’s happening, there’s more stuff coming through every day. And yes, again, in the area of diabetes, disease, and all the metabolic area, there’s so much data in the last 10 years, that’s just so much has changed, as well as developing that, you know, you left behind if you don’t know it, and I need, I need to know so to speak. it was kind of it kind of tapped an area of me that was like, yes, this is interesting me. It’s keeping me excited about what’s going on. But also I’m, get to know what’s happening. And I always say that in order to, guess, to really test how well you know something, you should teach it, or you should kind of try and do some and teach it. But also, if you know this information, why can’t you disseminate it and share it to people? Because again, people might want to be interested in it or might learn something from it. And it’s that whole education kind of aspect, which I’ve cultivated over the years. And I guess I joined social media quite late. I mean, I would always go on things like YouTube and Facebook and things like that, which is kind of the early generations of that. Twitter or X and as we call it, LinkedIn and that side of things, Instagram and TikTok, quite late to it. So I think 2017 was when I kind of joined Twitter at the time. And that was my first foray into engagement and interaction and education in social media. And really came about because I think I had something to say, think I felt confident enough to kind of I’ve seen it about I’d kind of avoided it because I know my personality would be kind of I need to check and look at it. So and again, with all the information flying, I would kind of constantly be interested and engaged in different things. And, and I knew that once I took a jump, that’ll be it. I kind of refrained a little bit, but also I felt that kind of that point, I had a few things that I wanted to highlight some of the kind of things I was doing, some of the things I was interested in, but also some of the people and engaging with the right people as well, you know, nationally and beyond, it kind of felt the right time for me. So that’s why I joined it.

Wow. Wow. So, so you, you had this passion to learn and you wanted to keep learning and that kind of led to your kind of specialization. But then you also wanted to make sure you wanted to make that education, that information available to others. And was that a kind of seed behind your launch of Goggle Docs?

Yes, the Goggle Docs came about kind of, I guess, in kind of naturally form, when you go, in order to keep a restful knowledge, you do social media, but actually a lot of the data comes in conferences. So I go to a lot of conferences to learn and educate myself. And you end up meeting similar like -minded people who you end up discussing late into the night or even all the while of the day just talking about nerding out, talking about data, talk about it, and seeing how it’s relevant to yourself. And I always like discussion. was like, even if I don’t know exactly what, know, what such I’m talking about, discussing to understand it, and also to probe and push and to help me understand, help kind of, yeah, to help kind of the mental engagement is what’s key for me, think is what it is. And that’s what social media does for me as well, but generally. And so kind of speaking to like -minded individuals, it kind of came across that, these are people who actually very similar, they enjoy the data, they enjoy discussing it, they enjoy seeing how it fits into practice and where it’s going, where it’s coming from. And with the pandemic coming in, we kind of missed that interaction. And so we set up goblocks first. Well, first we used to meet in the pandemic, just kind of online and start talking about things and just discussing it. was COVID at the time and the data and cardiovascular disease and all that side. And then it kind of develops that actually, well, we’ll come out of COVID and we go into these things. Well, why don’t we, you we’re in a very fortunate position where we get to learn and we get to go to some of these conferences and we also get to, we always, you know, my phone, my tabs are all like 500 tabs of like data, unfortunately, unfortunately, just kind of papers and things. So I read all these things. So why don’t we kind of do something with that? And didn’t know what it was at the time. Let’s just do something. So we started off with podcasts, talking about conferences and prepping, you know saying what our highlights of the conferences were and what beforehand and afterwards reviewing it. We built that, that was first initially a kind of a discussion. It was just audio. Then we thought, actually, why don’t we make this a video where we can show interaction and discuss things. And we made it more a video podcast. And that was on YouTube and a few other areas. We had our GoggleDocs web as well. We built GoggleDocs as a result of that. And then it expanded from there to do social media, do X or Twitter and do like tweetorials where you have posts and… constantly sending posts and just, you data and up to date and interesting things that we found interesting. We thought if we find it interesting, maybe others might, and if they don’t, okay, but we’re going to do what we want, what we find interesting, not cater to others. But equally, if we find it interesting, surely this we’ll see where it goes with that. We’ll be true to ourselves and do what we want to do. And if that builds people like that then we’ll carry on. and if we fail naturally want to change that and move that we will. And we’re slowly building that more. So we we, you know, we, we could, because difficult, we’re all balancing it with our day jobs and night jobs and other jobs. this is our passion project that we do. So we fit the time around it and we start to, you know, we look at what’s happening in the world of, of the cardiometabolic care and, and conferences, but also otherwise other key important things, know, key developments into feel like beastie or glucose monitoring, things like that. And how, know, heart failure, CKD, how can we kind of build an education around it? And we want to make it different because we’re, traditional education has been there for some time. And I think in the setting of, mean, cardiologists are very good at this, but in the setting of diabetes, perhaps, and the whole cardiometabolic care, there’s nobody really doing things bit different. And that’s always kind of what I wanted. That’s the whole point of Gov is to do something a bit different, education with a smile, education that’s not typically didactic, not kind of sterile, so to speak. It’s a bit more engaging and variable, I guess. And we’re still not even there yet. mean, there’s still so much further we can go. So many ideas that we do have and want to go. It’s just balancing that. So we’re building it and developing it. And we’ve done a lot of different things and different platforms, know, from LinkedIn to YouTube to Twitter to Instagram at some point as well. So it’s just kind of different things that we’re looking to try and build and develop and different ways of that, not just kind of simple education, simple lectures, but also involving different members of the team. different considerations. We have the nerdy kind of geeky stuff where we talk about the data and the papers, general topics, the practical aspects, we talk about considerations in certain settings. So it’s a bit mixed is what we have. And I guess our target audience is healthcare professionals at this point. But it’s sometimes freely available.

So members of the public can see that. So it’s in the public domain. You’re thinking about other health professionals as the audience. You mentioned that you you what directs you is the things you’re passionate about, the things you want to put out there. What’s the reaction been like? How’s it been received?

So it’s interesting. I think what I’d like to say is that we got people a lot more interested in different ways of educating, I think. I see this because around the pandemic time, people started to do a lot of podcasts generally. In the setting of education, were building as well. I think we kind of did something a bit different with the confidence side of things and kind of highlighting things. And then when we did the videos and the video tutorials as well and the education that way and made it more kind of like a conversation and more kind of relaxed discussion about things. It changed to make it really kind of really focused and kind of just hear the facts, the figures, here’s what you have to do, here’s what this shows and this is the thing to make it bit more kind of conversational about just people talking about the data, maybe not going to as much detail as we could, but enough detail to kind of… discuss the salient features of a trial or a production, but then putting that kind of that practical slant to it and the clinical slant saying, what does this mean? What is its impact? And because we all approach things in a different way, with primary, secondary care and different levels of data analysis and kind of, guess, urgent levels in a way, sometimes challenge each other or talk to each other and kind of ask questions of each other to kind of, which we don’t know the answers to, we’re not being prepped some of this, we just kind of talk and say, well, what about this? Or we discuss this. And it kind of provides a bit of authenticity to it. It also means that you have to know what you’re talking about and it really tests you and it’s sometimes have to be bit engaging. I think it’s the balance of personalities, balance of knowledge, balance of priorities that really gets that flow. think that’s what we see. And it’s funny because I saw a lot more of that in conference, a lot more of that in online educators as well, capturing a lot more of kind of informal aspect, that kind of balance of things and keeping it really kind of you know, a different way of doing things. One of the other things actually, I would say is that when it was Twitter at the time, tutorials, kind of stacked kind of tweets that linked to each other. you build a certain area, for example, say heart failure, and you just kind of constantly tweet about 30, 40, sometimes tweets in a row, like kind of linked to each other. So it’s a kind of it’s kind of a thread of, of education. And people would, I people were doing it before where they were kind of doing it just just facts and just kind of words. What I did, I think this was a few years ago, actually, no, sounds old, but yeah, was actually incorporate GIFs, memes, kind of add a bit of kind of cheekiness to add a bit of kind of fun to it, whilst also showing the data and linking it with references in that link with the with the picture of this of the graph or of the slides I want or data I want to look at to kind of incorporate it to make it a bit more fun and engaging. kind of you use a bit of puns you use you use kind of comments you throw back, you link up to other things, you kind of link to our own videos as well. So you, guess it was time to change the format of how that serious education was delivered. And I saw it basically after that, it got a lot of traction, people enjoyed it. And it changed a lot how education was delivered by a of other companies, people to make it in that format as well. Just found quite interesting.

That’s really interesting, isn’t it? To see how, you know, there was a, you know, a time probably not that long ago with the idea of putting a fun GIF into medical or scientific piece of information, piece of education would be, you know, would be shocking. But actually that, you know, it seems that you’re getting more engagement from that, because it’s the style of communication that happens on these platforms anyway. So why not bring the science to it in the same format?

It’s been true to yourself as well. mean, I like the dates, but actually, also like Joe, you you talk, you don’t, you it’s sometimes it’s, it’s, you to really focus when you’re talking really serious. And it’s good. But actually, if you want to, if you’re trying to listen to something, when you’re not talking, you shouldn’t just learn and get something, but also enjoy it. It’s an experience. think education is an experience. And that’s the key thing. We have to move away from education. Well, it’s moving away from education just being education, to speak, is purely like, here’s knowledge, take it. It’s gonna be more, here’s the kind of platform, here’s everything, here’s the education as a whole amongst the kind of entertainment or interesting kind of… area. And so we might agree, disagree with me, from my perspective, I think it is changing how we how we how we receive education. Because I think the pandemic, what it did was it was good. also meant we were saturated by a lot of these podcasts, a lot of these videos, all these podcasts, all of these online education aspects. And that’s fine, because we needed a time and we still need it. But it’s it’s kind of how do you balance that with kind of someone’s, everyday life and and try to fit it in with everything. And also, how do you engage someone to do that? have to kind of actually get them to put a screen on and do that, unless they have to, it’s kind of, well, what are you trying to achieve? And at the moment, know, at Gockelos, don’t, all we provide is education. We don’t provide anything else with that. It’s just basically here. So how do you make it so that people want to actually listen in? And that’s throughout the content, the topics you talk about, or the way you deliver it, or a mixture of both, different things, and the audience that you deliver it So could it be kind of a way? And I used to get myself, what would I want? Do I want to go? I was, like webinars. I’m aware that my attention span with everything does fluctuate at times. So how do you keep that intentional? How do you fixate or how do you get, get that key message across initially? And that’s just how you deliver it in the key things. And we’re still learning. I say this, but again, you can, you can be, look at the vision and say, well, why, if you say that, why are you doing this? but it’s all the learning process. And that’s why I like developing and trying to figure out what, works, what doesn’t. And some things work really well. Some things don’t, some topics take off and you get thousands of views. Some don’t. And it’s just. I don’t know. I would have thought this would be more interesting, but it doesn’t. and things like, you know, YouTube shorts and things that are really, you know, there’s some fascinating ways educate people. want bite sized chunks, don’t they? Exactly. And social media allows for that. You know, things like TikTok, things like Instagram, things like YouTube shorts. Now there’s YouTube, it’s YouTube shorts. You know, kind of there’s, there’s a different way. so how do you, and how do you fit what you want to say in those things? So starting to develop more into that and understand it bit more and trying to get, yeah, trying to balance the kind of seriousness with the, with the fun with also trying not to be too click baity as well. it’s, it’s kind of, yeah. Yeah.

But I suppose there is, there’s something about tracing that engaging content where people may engage with it, I guess, kind of really diverse range of healthcare professionals actually, at different, different ages, different stages in their career, different levels of knowledge, but by making it highly engaging, they can engage with it. And some won’t even be thinking about, okay, I’m now It’s not like I’m going to go and do some CPD, some, professional development, I need to learn something. They’ve seen the tweet. They’ve seen the content now they’re learning without even having to feel like I’m switching on learning mode now it’s just happening because it’s part of the, just the way they’re engaging on social media.

Exactly yeah, subconscious learning or kind of just you see something and you kind of, like in the morning, you’re scrolling on your screen or something, just looking or at night you look at it and say, okay, what’s that? Maybe look for a few things. You’ll see you’ll pick something up and then that’s that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the job done essentially. But if people, some people are interested more and we want to look at it in more detail then that’s kind of where you have it. And I think social media is great for that. That’s, that’s kind of where for me, social media has made the biggest impact is the ability to kind of get so much knowledge and kind of have something to like, store in the back of my head again. Okay. I saw that. That’s something. Keep it there. I need it in the future, I know where to kind of what I’ve read or where it says I can find it. Or, I’ve learned something that, you know, I can’t go to every conference in the world and I can’t go to all especially so my cardiology friends and colleagues across the pond in America, they do a lot of good tweeting and education on social media as well. So I understand a lot about them. And what’s going on in those realms as they all kind of merged together in multimorbidity and long term conditions. So it helps helps build that kind of knowledge base and also my part. I mean, they also would look to me and GoggleDocs as well to share that information from a diabetes perspective. And also otherwise, again, merging, I have always interest in cardiovascular disease as well. it’s kind of frost pollination of education across multiple specialties, multiple countries, members of the multidisciplinary team and healthcare professionals. And I’ve made some great contacts and great links and people who I count as friends now as a result of social media and also people that I collaborate with and work with and write papers with as well as a result of that. So it’s an amazing networking tool as well, but an education networking tool as well, is not mentioned as much as the whole information dissemination.

I love that and that idea that sometimes friendships can develop through just social media engagement and then you finally meet somebody face to face at a medical conference or something and it’s like, I had someone say to me, you you look just like your Twitter profile. was like, well, that’s good. Cause it’s supposed to be me.

You’re not catfishing anyone.

yeah, exactly.

Well, actually Patrick from Goggle Docs, he’s, I met him. We engaged in social media and then I him at a conference, a cardiology conference actually. And, and so that was that we got to know aware of each other through that. And we would have discussions and educational discussions on Twitter and discuss things. And, and, and as a result of that, we, you know, we realized we were like -minded individuals and became friends and obviously goggledocks as well. it kind of, that’s what I’m saying. you know, you don’t know where those interactions will lead.

And I think for me, what’s interesting is I was, as you know, I was at EASD last year with my colleague, Jamie, and we bumped into each other there too. And Jamie and I, look, there’s, you know, we were seeing what would become to us the heroes of the data that we analyse. You know, we track and analyse how healthcare professionals are talking about health topics so we can learn from those and develop, you know, kind of shared knowledge. And suddenly seeing all these people that were for us almost celebrities in the data of all that social media conversation. But you feel like you know someone to some extent from their social media content.

It’s true. And it’s funny. you get that I get a lot of people come up to me and come and say, I know you from GoggleDocs or I know you from social media and that side of things. And it’s interesting. You don’t, I never considered it really that would be people would recognize would know me or recognize me and I did it just just because I wanted to spread the information, I wanted to be seen as a source of information and knowledge. But it was never about that recognition side of things that make sense and but it’s a byproduct. You get people coming in conferences coming otherwise saying or saying, how’s GoggleDocs? How’s this? And it does take traction and people you know do recognize myself as, well this is the reason why we have this interview as well someone who does educate on social media. As life gets busy, it gets harder to do that sometimes, you got to balance it. it’s, it’s I’ve, yeah, I’ve had a lot of people that, yeah, a lot of people from people you wouldn’t expect, like people from other, you know, like America a lot of time come and recognize as well. And, and, that’s just really strange. Sometimes, you know, the world’s a small, big place because a small place certainly.

Absolutely. The, the, know, the way that the Twitter networks between health professionals that we see all over the world, it, it, it levels out all that sort of international geography so often and changes damage. So I was going to ask you about this because you know, we’ve talked about, you know, diabetology, the cardio metabolic space and so on. And you talked about comorbidities in that whole space. What, do you see it’s the biggest challenge or opportunities? I was going to ask you, you know, locally, nationally, internationally, globally, I think actually it probably all overlaps because we’re part of a, you know, a much larger global health environment. So where do you see the challenges and opportunities in your in your sort of a field of specialty?

So the challenges everywhere, I think are twofold. There’s economic challenges for any kind of any kind of healthcare economy really to deal with an aging population with multiple long term conditions. And this is true across across the world essentially, in the setting of well, take the UK for example, a restrained NHS budget, which which is trying to fit to how do you how do you offer some of these important, exciting and development, newly developed products and medications et cetera, which will have an impact on the budget and then on the upfront costs which may save down the line costs, but you have to find the money now. The other most important thing I would say along with finances is equity of access. So how do you provide these services, any services, any kind of treatments et cetera, to whole population in any country without creating inequalities either rich and the people who are well to do or in the know will get access to them quicker than the people who may not, but they may be the ones who need it most. Isn’t it Tudor, June Tudor mentioned it.

Absolutely. And we’re hearing a lot about that health inequity, inequality of access. What do you think, what’s the answer? What needs to happen to solve these issues?

Firstly, I think and it’s getting better, you acknowledge that is an issue. That’s the key thing you have to, you have to know, you have to know it’s an issue to actually want to sort of, you want to, you know, in order to want to improve something, you have to know what’s wrong with it. So I think that’s the key thing. It’s, it’s about, and I think this is where, you know, top down wise, and we can do things in smaller areas and localities, top down, We need coming from the from the top levels to address the inequalities and understand, almost plot it on a map across the whole country, region, healthcare region, wherever it is. And say well these are the areas, this is where the uptake goes, this is where health outcomes are poorest. And then you have to understand why that’s the case. It’s not just as straightforward as throw some money in to kind of improve it, in that case you’d be firefighting everywhere. You’ve got to understand what the drivers of, simply even healthcare access or, and it depends on different communities, different ethnicities, different social demographic groups. Again, so you can understand a bit more about that. And then you’ve got to actually focus on trying to improve that and develop things. The issue is that it takes time and it takes a focus, which not everyone in every field will have. But I’m seeing it more and more. There’s a constant, with anything that’s coming on, there’s always a mention that we should not drive inequality. We should try and reduce inequality. So it’s been talked about certainly a lot more now than it was five years ago or even before, or even a few years ago. And so it’s acknowledged. acknowledging that it’s actually doing something about it. But at least we’re acknowledging it now, think.

Do you see anyone or any organizations, let’s take for the UK, for example, that you think are doing a great job of raising that issue or putting it on the table, at least in terms of acknowledging it?

So from my mind, think, if I’m speaking purely diabetes, for example, I do think Diabetes UK are a very good charity, but also the organization that a lot of professional members, but they are aware they are trying to do things to improve access to lot of technology and diet aspects and such things like that. So there are a lot being done there. Diabetes prevention program again, that interests England. are, I would say in the diabetes realm, partly because people like, know, Partha Kaur, for example, you mentioned before, people that are kind of driving a lot of that for lot of communities are well aware of the challenge and are trying to reduce that inequity. And even .C .H .A .D. example, diabetes lead is aware of and done a lot kind of in terms of population data to look at see how you can reduce the inequality side of things. So I think in diabetes, we’ve got a few groups doing that. know, a salvation perspective, we’ve got a Salvation Health Foundation who, again, are talking about it from that perspective. We have a lot of other kind of communities doing it, Diabetes Africa as well, looking at it from that perspective. So I think we have a lot of, engaged and vocal advocates to try and reduce that inequality. And it’s going the right direction. Again, you can never, you never be happy with where you are. I don’t think that’s, that’s, should be. They should try and always improve for better access and even, know, even access to technology and pumps, access to, to cause monitoring. There’s still some variation there. And I think that’s something that needs to be worked towards. it, we’ve got the right leaders kind of doing that, but we just need to kind of build on that more.

That’s brilliant. Come back to the question of social media, you mentioned, you said you got into social media late, 2017. How important has social media been in your work over the last, let’s say seven years?

So yeah, I mean, for my side, again, 2017 was kind of, I’d not yet become a consultant, but I going towards that. The reason I joined it was also to kind of interact, but also to share some of the stuff that I was doing with older adults and dementia and diabetes and and that side of things, and then some of the work I was doing was trying to engage but also highlight, but also kind of spread awareness actually, what it was. And I think what it did for me was A: Understand that they’re like-minded individuals who also find these areas, you what you find interesting, interesting, and you can, build the networks from that. So you build kind of people you might collaborate with or work with, or work on education with as well. You learn a lot more information, things that you’re working on, you realize where other people are because people are sharing their own things as well and sharing their own interests. You understand, okay, that’s relevant to me so I can utilize that or speak to them or contact them or find out a bit more about that. Or the data just learning and again, learning anything to say well what’s happening? Okay, what’s going where? As a specialist, want to be this person, I need to know what’s happening in my specialty. I need to be well aware of what’s happening left, right and center everywhere. And social media allows for this information coming from different angles for me to process and say, well, actually, okay, this is what people are talking about. It’s what’s innovative and new. This is what’s happening, what the experts, the people that I look up to as the, you know, the key people in the specialty or the key researchers, the key data analysts, etc. What they’re saying. Okay that’s relevant, or does what I think and what I say match up to what they’re saying. And does that validates kind of what I’m doing as an educator as well? If I’m saying something actually is completely different to what everyone else saying, is that right or wrong? And it helps kind of understand that. I’m on the right tracks or not. And it kind of, yeah, it kind of, it helps, it helps me kind of, it people more confidence in what I was saying. Also the interactions I would get, I would be able to, I’d like to think somewhat hold my own against a lot of people I thought were, you know, I respect, I still respect, but you know, people that I, people that I thought I could no way interact, I would not be on, I’m not on their level, but if I can have that engagement and actually holding up and actually engaging them and actually keeping up with the conversation. it does a sense of self validation, I agree, but it is validating. But that’s the way and it builds a confidence in terms of when you are talking when you are educated to say, well, actually, no, I’ve analyzed this, I’ve discussed this, and actually, yes, it’s right, it’s the right thing, or it’s, it’s an aspect to consider. And I think as an educator, need to be, you need to be confident in yourself a little bit to know, you should be overconfident, think that you know it all know, but you should be confident that you feel a bit of doubt about something, you have to either reduce, reduce that doubt by learning about it, or or be aware of where your limits are and then kind of work on that or not only leave that aside. And I think that’s what social media really helped help me kind of get the information but also assess my thought processes and that and kind of when I’m reviewing a paper, analysing it, it’s the right thing. And that’s why sometimes I go to conferences as well, it’s kind of something to see what if what I’m thinking, what are the people saying I think is that that matching. So it’s kind of that element which which perhaps me, I’m not sure others do that, for me that’s what’s been quite, that’s why I also go to lot of these conferences and things to help make sure that my mind is working.

So yeah, so it’s almost like there’s this constant environment where you can be part of, you know, a forum of discussion with other professionals that probably isn’t, except for a conference, probably isn’t available in any other kind of way day to day.

Exactly. You can have some really in -depth conversations. I mean, you can have some fun conversations as well, know, the teasing and negative, people you’ve been friends that you can kind of talk with. But also this this something, for example, the other day, I was talking to online, a statistician, specialist person, statistician in America, cardiologist. And I, I am not a strong stats person, I will understand that. And it’s telling a paper, I’ll review and analyse it, and I’ll do and I’ll be able to kind of, you know, infer a lot of things and understand a lot of things. this, but this person is is is is the next level. Like I bowed out of awe to him and able to have the conversations with him, chat, private messaging about papers and things. And also on social media as well and kind of getting acknowledgement as well saying, you know, yeah, that makes sense or something. It shows that, I can keep up with some people to an extent and it’s a bit validating, but also it means that, you you’re on the right track if you can do that. And I wouldn’t have had those conversations otherwise. And I’ve so much from that kind of areas that I’m not quite confident in build on, you develop it. There’s so much available on social media and so many different formats. For me, I like X or Twitter because it’s there’s like kind of links and a short kind of discussions. And you can also understand people, they’re saying, but equally, you just look at the facts and that’s it. YouTube takes a bit of time in a way, because you have to be on it and engage with That’s why shorts are probably better than goggles, we do that. But equally, there are people who may want to learn more. And it’s across a broad range of professionals. could be from pharmacists, nurses to multi -specialty, senior figures to other industry elements of people understanding bit more about it as well. So it’s quite broad and other educational experts also interact as well and then conference people and people who look at people to educate at conferences. So you get kind of invites sometimes as a result of that. So it’s kind of, it provides an, I guess, it’s kind of like a highway for information and people and learning a bit more and interacting. it’s, it’s, it’s really helped a lot myself personally, but also as Gargledox. and it, there’s so much further it could go and so much more that we could do. The problem is not to oversaturate more, you know, people have glued onto it. It’s about, I guess it’s about providing what people want offering something for people. Not everyone will like it, not everyone wants it, but people who do will again, something from it, perfect. And there you go. And we try and be a little more inclusive and try and get more different people involved. We try to get colleagues and, and, and, various members of the multidisciplinary team, not just keeping it with, know, cause I’m a secondary care doctor. I’m Patrick, our primary care, but it’s, it’s, it’s providing a bit more, you know, getting the nursing, getting the pharmacist input, getting other specialty inputs, et cetera, to kind of make it bit more rounded, kind of proper discussion and more than just us saying what we say, trying to get other opinions and trying to get support and trying to get knowledge. We vote for that. What do we want to know? Okay, so that’s who do we need for that? then and therefore we’d hope that people who watch it or listen would want to know that or would have more rounded kind of knowledge as a result of that. And we started delving a bit more into kind of using a bit of slides and a bit of kind of little bits of information to throw in as well to kind of keep it fresh. again, the base is still very much an informal discussion.

Love it. Fantastic. So on a day to day basis, what does social media look like for you? How do you use social media? You know, how does it build into your sort of daily routine or is it not a routine or what does it look like?

Yeah. So again, the different stages. So in the very beginning of when I was using social media, was basically quite a constant like first thing in morning learn again, people again, it’s also interesting because if you look at social media, a lot of people will go on it and post maybe look at first thing in morning when they wake up before going to work. And then when they’re at work, there won’t be as much interaction. Some people don’t know lunchtimes and breaks and in between, but it’s not as detailed as first thing in morning and maybe on sometimes in the evenings as well as sometimes weekends up and down, maybe first things in the mornings again. But most people when they wake up, we’ll go on their phone and kind of look at things. So think that’s the key time between eight and nine usually a bit earlier, sometimes 730 and nine, let’s say. And so when I wake up, I kind of go on a bit look and see what’s happening, what’s been discussed, I’m usually tagged into a few things, so it’s seeing kind of what the relevance is. And, and even kind of, you know, whether you like or share is like, how much does it matter to you? And kind of your thing? for me, and it comes at kind of, I guess, the time I think, well, you know, I can like it, do I like it? Yes, but does it matter enough? And do I think it’s something that needs to be shared enough to retweet it or reshare it, repost it? or to highlight it or to comment on even so again not just that also for some papers that I usually come as late at night as I was look at a few articles sometimes or first thing in morning might see if I get an update and then say well is it worth me posting about is it something that’s that’s that’s that’s interesting really interesting to me really interesting to me or something that is relevant and is worth sharing or something cutting edge kind of links that. So that’s the kind of thing you think is it worth posting or not? And is it worth commenting on certain things? And then sometimes if, you know, it depends on the frame of mind, if I’m ready to like engage, I would debate and discuss a paper someone’s talked about or some topic and be like, what about this and that? So that could happen at any time. first thing in morning is usually the high, high time. And then kind of in the evening, sometimes we’ll just after work and start, you kind of will go on it as and when and add food and TV and et cetera. So you can balance it all out and then late at night as well. Some go in it as well. Yeah. And also you’ve got to account for the time zones as well. So some people that we, for example, you’re posting or when you’re talking to someone, if you’re talking to you in America, they have five hours plus behind. So if you’re doing first thing in the morning, they’re still asleep. And the evening, wake up or in the evening, people in India, people in, further afield as well, Hong Kong, you know, so you’ve got the time differences. So you can’t really always have conversations. but it’s. So it’s kind of that LinkedIn, as I always look at as well, LinkedIn, find is a bit more, I guess, I need to engage with a bit more. It’s more kind of, for me, it’s always more of a job based and kind of, it’s always has been that, but it is another avenue for education. We do post some blocks on that. And then YouTube, again, we, it’s building up content and sending that, they’re looking at that. I think with that side of things and with goggles, when we post things, I think it’s more about, just doing what’s, what’s, what we feel is right and comfortable and not really much more beyond that and looking at other people, what other people are doing, et cetera. It’s just, do we want to do? So I don’t, I don’t really look at anything else say, what are they doing? What’s the thing just look and see what I’m seeing. I don’t kind of actually search for people and I just kind of say, well, what am I seeing on Twitter? What am I seeing on YouTube and education? What am seeing all that? And then it just kind of factors in, but I don’t do a comparison as such. If that makes sense.

No, absolutely. So it seems that it fits in pretty simply. Your data, the usage just fits in seamlessly to you are, what’s happening at any time. And it’s a kind of natural part of your, like for anybody else, really, mean,

I guess the only time I’d say is, is when the conference is about. So for example, if there’s conferences, I know a key trial is being presented. I’ll be searching a lot more when it comes out, also looking online to see when the paper’s out. Or if I’m at a conference or if there’s a conference, I kind of following the right, you make sure that I’ve got the updates and looking at it. and, yeah, engaging if I need to, and all kind of all highlight again, sometimes I find it, it sounds funny, but I see it as in some of these conferences, like to, when there’s a lot of people talking about different specialties, I like to provide the voice of the diabetologist. in if you’re talking about, because all the all these kind of specialties are merging together, cardiology, read, obesity, older adults, well. So I provide a kind of a diabetes perspective. And that’s so people are saying something, something’s I just want to, you again, discuss and make sure that it’s the right things and the highlighting there’s certain treatments and medications that are aware of the risks and benefits or the experiences that I’ve gained as a diabetologist that some of these medications are now in a newer field, make sure that there’s confidence and awareness of that. And yeah, and that you still feel kind of like, you still have a, what’s it called, not patriotism, but kind of a bias towards your own specialty. And so you just want to make sure that it’s kind of represented. So that’s for me with diabetes.

Wow. Yeah, that’s fascinating to get a sense of that. if you were if a doctor came to you and said, look, I, I feel like I want to, you know, grow my knowledge and my impact on social media. What what advice would you give to them?

So first thing I would say is, if what’s the reason why, what’s the reasoning behind that? You got to know what the what drives people for me, it’s always it’s always been about learning and education and maybe the interactions a little bit kind of interacting with people in the shape of learning and building my knowledge base and you know, mind processing, but something wonder just to self promotion or want to do it for because I’ve got this and that and that’s initially why I joined it said something to say but actually, I spent a bit of time just observing so I would say is find that reason that the reasons why you want to do it. be aware that social media can get quite, you can, when you first start, you’re going, you can get quite immersed in it it can take a lot of your time. Gotta be aware of that. And I think that comes with time yourself realize that actually take a step back or relax. I can only come to the only point where someone develops that where they think actually I need to just not be as much on it or I need to factor it in a few more things. Most people that’s happened to happen to me as well. But also first, just get on the platforms and just observe, see what’s going on, see what, follow the people that you want to follow that you you find interesting or you kind of want to learn. There’s a few people like with any specialty or any area in healthcare etc that you would you know you know they’re the key key people, key digital opinion leaders as you mentioned and or people that are key people who kind of are relevant to the specialty or area you want to follow and see what sometimes what they’re saying what what’s going on how they post how they kind of get interactions don’t compare yourself to people who’ve got 100 ,000 followers because it’s never gonna happen you got to be comfortable with what you know, is the aim of what you want to do should always be there. It should be about how many people you have following you, how many people you have clicking likes, etc. Just do what is organic to you. It’s hard to say that because you see that and some people initially you post them, you have five likes, someone’s got 150 likes, you’re like, well, it should, you know, it should be about being true to why you’ve joined in what you want to do. And once you’ve got confidence, start, start, you can start, you asking, interacting with the people, know, whenever you’re interacting with the people, asking questions or just showing your presence and then, you know, posting things and then, you know, who you tag and how you tag people depends on the interactions, also what you want to say. So being aware of who’s on Twitter or X or social media, any kind of format and who you can link in with is a key thing and who’s relevant and you know, while you’re posting about something. So if it’s something you’re doing in a project, you know, who was the project in who are the people who people to link in with and talk to It’s it’s kind of just and that comes with time understanding it and and and it’s funny because different different different posts and for myself even now even different things we post at a gogol oksor myself you You have different people who you think would be interested in some people you’ve told us because you know that they’re like minded and there’s people who you post to because you think they should know about this and some people you post because you want that interaction and understanding And it just, it varies and it builds because as you network builds and as the people you know, interact with you build, you find different people who kind of come in and start interacting with you more than they use office. And when someone else comes in or the people you understand have different areas of interest or whenever you post something, they’re always the ones that interacts. know, that’s their area of interest or that’s what tickles their fancy so to speak. So it’s just kind of different, different things you kind of understand. So that comes with time. So I’d say, yeah, anyone’s starting up, just, just, just be aware of what you want to do. Don’t don’t worry too much about, you know, all the kind of posts and everything, but observe and see how it goes and start interaction slowly and such develop and find those like -minded individuals, find those like -minded people to build your network with.

That’s brilliant. And where can people find you online?

Yes. So there’s myself personally, which is on X is @Amarput. So first six or seven letters of my name. And that’s on X. I am on LinkedIn as well, Amarputtanna.

and with Goggledocs, we have our @goggledocs, G O G G L E D O C S one word. And we have our YouTube again, which is Goggledocs as well. So just searching YouTube is not Google docs. It’s goggledocs. That’s always a tricky one. but we, based that on, goggle box, which is a UK show, people observing TV, observing things and talking about it. So we were observing data, observing offices. we’re talking about, so that’s the kind of the play on words doesn’t make it because Google always trying to order correct. Did you mean GooggleDocs? No, no. That’s on YouTube. We also have LinkedIn. We’re also on Instagram. are we have a lot of different kind of website as well. GoggleDocs, which will be linked in to our web pages. It’s again, the web page needs work on which I’m building on that. But certainly the YouTube and X channels are linked in are probably the most vocal where we are. And a lot of stuff that we post is on there. and you know, if you like what you see, do subscribe and follow us. we certainly have a lot more things coming our way, coming your way actually. the more we kind of get interested in what we do, the more we kind of get confidence to try something a bit different. And I think that’s, that’s, that’s the next stage is doing something a bit different.

Love it. Love it. Looking forward to seeing what happens next. Dr. Puttanna, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. It’s been fascinating just getting inside your head and how you use social media and the impact it’s having. All the best with the next steps. Really can’t wait to see what happens next for you.

I’m sure we’ll let you know. But yeah, again, thank you for involving me. Social media has been a massive kind of influence and means support tool for me, I would say over the years. It’s partly why I’m where I am today is partly because of social media. And I say that honestly.