Comments for BioMed 2.0

Comment on CTSI 2012 Retreat: The Live-Tweet by Katja Reuter

Katja Reuter — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 06:45:37 +0000

Thanks for posting this overview, Anirvan. I agree with your assessment that it was more of a summary of the event/various monologues as opposed to a conversation (6% retweets & 94% tweets).

Using http://archivist.visitmix.com/, however, I found that 167 tweets were sent out using #CTSI2012. What tool did you use to assess the Twitter activity around the hashtag #CTSI2012?

Also interesting, the top 5 tweet sources were TweetCaster for Android (41%), Hootsuite (16%), Tweetbot for iOS (12%), mobile web (9%), and Twitter for iPhone (8%).

Comment on Oh that Facebook…Can social media be used for clinical trial recruitment? by tracystrickroth

tracystrickroth — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:31:35 +0000

@Anirvan – totally agree. One of huge gaps with using social media for study-specific purpose is that it is so limited to “stay in this box”. And then because we are being careful in what we say, it comes across to the user that you are pushing an agenda. And due to the limitations by IRBs about what you can say in clinical trial recruitment, you can end up sounding like a broken record, just repeating the “approved” recruitment language. Who is interested in that?
I think it’s probably more effective if you create a page that is more general to a disease research area, say, Asthma Research at UCSF, and then you are not limited to promoting one specific trial but other asthma related topics that might fit in the category, as well. If you provide links to general resources for asthma research at FDA or CDC–topics that are public knowledge, you don’t need to get IRB approval. You are just offering educational links that the members might be useful or interesting. Then fold in information about the clinical trial, every 5-10 posts. Or as you suggest, post other trials as well. It shouldn’t be a competition for enrollment, it should be about informing the patient that these opportunities and resources exist and if you are interested in clinical trials then here are some options that might work for you. I think it’s good to be mindful of the 80/20 rule. 80% of your info is valuable to your followers, and no more than 20% is promotional.
@Dave, PatientsLikeMe is a great organization which really taps into fostering the community aspect of social media in disease specific areas. It a huge resource for particular diseases such as MS or fibromyalgia, where they have 20,000+ members. That’s incredible! Sparse in other areas…but it’s getting there. I do really love how you can search by “what you have” and can see how many members there are like you. We’ve explored using them for local/regional specific outreach and the impact becomes much smaller.

Comment on Oh that Facebook…Can social media be used for clinical trial recruitment? by Dave

Dave — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:03:13 +0000

Patients Like Me (patientslikeme.com) has been doing this for a while. Not necessarily to recruit for clinical trials, but to bring patients with similar stories together. For the patients, it’s an invaluable resource and for clinicians it’s an invaluable tool.

Comment on Oh that Facebook…Can social media be used for clinical trial recruitment? by Anirvan Chatterjee

Anirvan Chatterjee — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:33:28 +0000

What Facebook offers, which other online advertising platforms can’t, is real demographic targeting across a wide audience. Radio and newspaper ads are fuzzy. Google ads can be linked to topics and keywords, but restricted only by geography. Facebook ads, on the other hand, can be sliced and diced by geography, gender, age, and interests. Once you know you can reliably reach Hispanic women ages 30-40 in Oakland, it’s hard to give up that level of precision and go back to a placement and a prayer.

My biggest issue with social media outreach being done by specific studies is just that—they’re focused only on that one given study. There’s typically been no way for studies to build on the outreach work of prior studies, or to link up with other health-related outreach (e.g. bone marrow donation).

Comment on Measuring federal social media interaction rates—and how UCSF fares by Courtney Anderson

Courtney Anderson — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:46:06 +0000

Thank you for bringing this up and elucidating.

Comment on Measuring total scholarly impact, beyond the cite by Describing the Difference Research Has Made to the World « BioMed 2.0

Describing the Difference Research Has Made to the World « BioMed 2.0 — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:55:39 +0000

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Comment on “Visible Tweets”: A Free Animation Tool To Display Twitter Messages In Public Spaces by katjareuter

katjareuter — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:01:30 +0000

Hi Courtney –

Thanks for sharing this!

Comment on “Visible Tweets”: A Free Animation Tool To Display Twitter Messages In Public Spaces by Courtney Anderson

Courtney Anderson — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:56:52 +0000

Great work and exposure for some interesting technologies! Thanks for your report from the conference the other day as well. Just last night “Wallit” was featured on Gabe Slate’s Start Up section. Slightly similar to “Visible Tweets.” Check it out: http://mashable.com/2012/03/06/wallit-app/

Comment on AMIA 2012 Joint Summit: a report back in tweets by “Visible Tweets”: A Free Animation Tool To Display Twitter Messages In Public Spaces « BioMed 2.0