How GI practice can benefit from social media.

Abstract

Social media has broadly affected medicine, perhaps most publicly by enabling increased communication with and among patients and colleagues. One of the most popular social media tool is Twitter, a microblogging website, where communication is posted via short messages and links composed of 140 characters or less - known as ‘‘tweets.’’ Twitter has grown rapidly in popularity since its founding in 2006, with over 175 million users worldwide producing 65 million tweets daily. Professional Twitter chat sessions have recently emerged in different fields, whether pure educational or even only blogging during big conferences. Twitter discussion @ UEG Week 2014 was a new initiative by the UEG Young Talent Group for young UEG Week delegates as well as the young GI Network. The idea was to give young gastroenterologists the possibility to discuss scientific topics with senior experts by a novel virtual way. Two sessions were conducted covering “How GI practice can benefit from social media use” and was moderated by myself and a scientific discussion on Hot topics in GI Cancer by the UEG Research Prize recipient Rebecca Fitzgerald and co-moderated by Tomer Adar. The target group was young gastroenterologists and basic scientists, regardless if they attend UEG Week or not. I've participated in a lot of different Twitter chat sessions, but this was probably one of the most engaged and dynamic ones I've ever been a part of! It was quite an experience soaking in all the knowledge and information about how to use social media as a gastroenterologist. All of the conversations during this one-hour chat session really brought forth an interesting question - how do we manage our e-doctor life? During the next UEG Week 2015, we are planning for more twitter sessions with even more variety of subjects: Don't miss @my_ueg #WeekChat, Barcelona October 24–28, 2015 or in the meantime @twitter.com/my_ueg Mostafa IBRAHIM Member of UEG Young Talent Group Dept. of Gastroenterology and Hepatopancreatology Erasme Hospital Université Libre de Bruxelles Brussels, Belgium