Twitter, a popular social network and free microblogging service, is being rapidly adopted by allergists, with 470% growth in one year.

Allergists increase Twitter use 470% in one year - 25 allergists reached 250,000 individuals from #AAAAI meeting Here is the poster: Rapid Growth of Twitter Use by Allergists and Immunologists for Professional Purposes: 470% increase (more than 4-fold) in Twitter use by allergists in one year Nana Fenny MD MPH (1), Vesselin Dimov MD (2), Raoul Wolf MD (2); Section of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (2), Departments of Internal Medicine (1) and Pediatrics, University of Chicago. Published in Annals of Allergy and Immunology, 2012. Introduction Twitter is a fast growing social network and microblogging site. Physicians use the medium to educate the public and patients as well as share new studies and garner opinions on new advances in the field from their colleagues. Aims - Identify the largest directory of allergists and immunologist on Twitter. - Evaluate the characteristics of use including medical/allergy specific content. - Analyze interconnections among allergists. - Describe and evaluate the response garnered from their followers on Twitter. Limitations - Small sample size - Short study duration Methods Comparison of allergists and immunologist use of Twitter during one-year period (May 2011 to May 2012). Descriptive characteristics from the public profile pages of self-identified allergists/immunologists were extracted. Snowball sampling strategy with the search terms “allergists, immunologists, allergy, asthma, wheeze, sneeze”. We also searched Twitter lists compiled by individual users that were identified from the Twitter keyword searches. Accounts representing organizations or physician practices rather than individual allergists were excluded. Protected and non-English language accounts were also excluded. The most recent 20 Twitter updates (tweets) of each individual account were included in the final analysis. Results 85 self-identified allergists were identified on Twitter in 2012 compared to 18 identified in the prior 2011 study. This represents a 470% increase (more than 4-fold) in Twitter use by allergists in one year. Most allergists were located in the USA (91%), used their personal name (95%) and had a profile picture (84%). There were 66 allergy-related organizations identified on Twitter. 80% of the allergists had more than 50 followers. 64% followed more than 50 users, 79% had more than 20 tweets. 78% of the allergists followed at least one allergist. Rapid Growth of Twitter Use by Allergists and Immunologists for Professional Purposes: 470% increase (more than 4-fold) in Twitter use by allergists in one year: Proportion of Tweets by Content Of the 1307 tweets analyzed: - 49% were allergy-related - 12% were general health-related - 31% were personal communications - 4% were retweets (post of tweets by other users) - 52% contained links We did not find evidence of unprofessional conduct in the analyzed Twitter updates. Proportion of Tweets by Content: Conclusion Twitter, a popular social network and free microblogging service, is being rapidly adopted by allergists, with 470% growth in one year. Future studies should focus on best practices of Twitter use for patient and physician education by individual allergist and specialty organizations. References Lulic I, Kovic I. Analysis of emergency physicians’ twitter accounts.Emerg Med J 2012. Published online 25 May 2012. Fenny N, Dimov V, Wolf R et al. Characteristics of the Professional Use of the Social Network Twitter by Allergists and Immunologists. Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology 2011;107, Issue 5, Supplement, Pages A1-A137. Chreitin K et al. Physicians on Twitter. Journal of the American Medical Asssociation, February 9, 2011 -Vol 305, No. 6 p566-568 Dimov, V, Parks K et al. The utility of an online social network service for professional collaboration and education in allergy and immunology. Annals of Allergy,Asthma and Immunology. November 2009 - Vol 103, A 126 Dimov, V, et al. The utility of weblog to stay current with the new developments in allergy and Immunology. Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. November 200Vol 103, A 127