OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

How Doctors Are Using Twitter To Help Patients and Connect with Colleagues

We're very intrigued by this article on AMNews about how physicians are using Twitter to help their patients and connect with colleagues because it's a trend we've been actively involved with for over a year now.  In fact, our R&D team has been heads down, working on one of the most exciting projects I've ever been a part of and we can't wait to share it with you when we launch later this year.

Many doctors we've spoken to over the past year about Twitter have said, I just don't get this Twitter thing and why it will be useful to me or my patients.  That's ok, and frankly to be expected at this stage because the reality is the Twitter platform is only 3 years old and most people hadn't even heard of Twitter before a few months ago when Oprah and Ashton joined.  We're still very much in the early adopter phase.

But as the AMNews article points out, and we are seeing firsthand, there are thousands of doctors using the service in valuable ways already:

"Doctors who keep tweeting stick around because they find it can be useful. Physicians most often use Twitter as an extension of their Web presence, a patient communication site, a marketing tool or a virtual water cooler with their colleagues. Or, maybe a combination of all four." (Read the complete article here.)

And we believe this is just the beginning which is one reason why OrganizedWisdom (@organizedwisdom) has been very active on Twitter and uses the platform not only to share valuable health information and updates with our users via over 100 condition specific Twitter streams, but we have been building an active community focused around health advocacy.  Earlier this year we launched @PolarWisdom, a news, community and advocacy feed for those living with bipolar depression.

I wish I could let the cat out of the bag now and show you what we're building but it's super top secret.  We promise those who follow us Twitter.com/organizedwisdom will be the first to get more details and special access so stay tuned...

OrganizedWisdom WisdomExchange (LIVE NOW): A Twitterview with Kent Bottles of ICSI

Join OrganizedWisdom's own Jen S. McCabe this morning for a live WisdomExchange Twitterview  with ICSI's Kent Bottles and feel free to join in the conversation.

Follow the Twitterview at Twitter.com/organizedwisdom or hasthags.org and we'll be using the hashtag: #owicsi.

If you aren't able to join us live, you can read the transcripts later and feel free to send us any feedback, questions or comments.

Best Wisdom of the Week: testing for COPD, cholesterol and type 2 diabetes, blood pressure and insomnia, and more!

It's time to highlight some of the best new WisdomCards we added to our collection last week. Our WisdomCards are hand-crafted, doctor-approved research summaries to help you find the health information you're after. Here's a sampling of what our hardworking Guides created last week:

• Think you might have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease?   See Kenyotta's WisdomCards to learn how to test for COPD and how to treat COPD.

• How many Americans have heart disease?  Jacky's WisdomCard answers that question, while Kenyotta shares info on heart disease and pregnancy.

• Questions about cholesterol?  Carolyn's WisdomCard helps clear up the confusion about the types of cholesterol complexes, Susan explores garlic and cholesterol, Misty looks into nuts and cholesterol, and Brian has a WisdomCard on the relationship between cholesterol and type 2 diabetes.

• Speaking of relationships, is there one between blood pressure and insomnia?  Check out Amy M.'s WisdomCard to find out.

Want more? You can always find the newest WisdomCards right on the OrganizedWisdom homepage!