There are many good reasons for a physician to use Twitter.
These range from being an entry point into social media in general, to following your organization’s tweets, to personal creative expression, and to generating revenue.
But by far and away the most important reason to be on Twitter is this: Time.
As every physician knows, time is one of our most precious commodities.
Sadly, as the digital universe grow at an ever accelerating rate, our time is under signifiant attack.
Whether it’s learning new EHR techniques (billed as time saving, but usually the opposite), responding to emails, changing medical protocols within our current profession niche, reviewing conferences we may want to attend, or reacting to management demands for this or that, most doctors are getting pulled in multiple directions 24/7 – and this is excluding our core patent responsibilities!
So why in the world would a physician want to “distract himself” with Twitter?
Simply this: A well designed Twitter platform is far from a distraction. Instead it is one of the most valuable time tools you have: A mobile information filter.
Let me repeat this: TWITTER IS A MOBILE INFORMATION FILTER.
Most physicians perception of Twitter comes from the media.
They see it as a never ending barrage of tweets coming down from either political or celebrity personalities, offering no real substance to their lives or career.
However, what most physicians don’t understand is that Twitter offers strong, user friendly filtering tools giving one access to information one wants where and when one needs it.
The ‘where counts because Twitter is a mobile tool; it is designed for the mobile platform, and it is in your pocket.
Every physician who has managed a complex patent knows it’s not the quantity of information you gather but the relevance of specific information you gather that makes a diagnostic difference in patient management.
It’s using Twitter to gather relevant information for your career which gives it such robustness as an information filter.
Here’s an example of how Twitter can save a busy physician time.
Lets say you are a 55 year old cardiologist and you have no desire to ever write a single tweet, or to ever engage with a single person in Twitter. All you want to do is save yourself some time.
You do, however, have an interest in keeping up with some of the major journals in your field, you have an eye on several cardiology conferences, and at prior conferences you have come across 5-6 speakers whom you deeply respect and with whom you want to at least be aware of what they are working on.
Within a simple Twitter account – and by simple, I mean no photo, no description, and no tweets – within 15 minutes you can easily set up a filter (via Twitter lists) which would target your above interests only.
Think about it. All major medical journals have a Twitter account and it is trivially easy to follow them, and only them.
Likewise, most organizations who sponsor medical conferences have a Twitter account, and will regularly tweet out information about their upcoming conferences. (Many conferences will also have an associated hashtag symbol {#}, which is also very useful form of filtering information on twitter. I will save the hashtag discussion for another day.)
Finally, many speakers at medical conferences, particularly keynote speakers, will have their own platform. They will have active Twitter accounts centered around their subject, just waiting to be followed. ( If you want to go ahead and follow mine, i am at @matthewrehrl – my steam is mostly about the interaction between twitter, healthcare, and health.)
Effectively, with a 15 minute investment of time you can be walking around with with the ultimate, personally customized information filter in your pocket.
For the foreseeable future information is the coin of the realm, but by using Twitter as a filter you will be able to separate out the Gold from the Copper.
Bottom line: Like it or not, we are thick in the information age, and if we don’t master information, it masters us.