The journey of a medical blogger: from Twitter to the New York Times

From @Berci: "I have many reasons to use Twitter. One of them is that it’s quite easy to get feedback from doctors who also use Twitter for communication. Now one of my stories was featured in the New York Times:

"Some people are even using Twitter for more urgent questions. Bertalan Meskó, a medical student at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, wrote a post about a patient with mysterious symptoms: “Strange case today in internal medicine rotation. 16 years old boy with acute pancreatitis (for the 6th! time). Any ideas?”

Within hours, specialists worldwide had responded, suggesting gallstones, lupus or growths on the pancreas. One of the suggestions helped the doctors with a diagnosis.

“It would have been impossible to find that specialist through e-mail, because we had no idea who to contact,” Mr. Meskó said."

Congratulations to Berci for being featured in the “newspaper of record” as mentioned by Susannah Fox!

We can use Google Buzz, Skype and Facebook to talk about interesting cases (not a good idea at present but in the future, with better privacy controls and HIPAA protection, may be) but does that improve patient care? The NYTimes does not mention the correct diagnosis, if one was reached....

References:
Getting the Most Out of Twitter, No Posting Necessary - NYTimes.com
From Twitter to the New York Times. ScienceRoll.

Guidance on Blogger Disclosure and FTC Guidelines

According to Edelman:

You don’t have to disclose anything if you are just a fan. If you happen to love Toyota and write about them, you don’t need to make a special disclosure that you own a Toyota. However, if Toyota gives you a car to use for two weeks, you must disclose this. It is Toyota’s responsibility to tell you that you need to disclose.

Transparency is key – if you are being paid, you must say that you are being paid. If you are receiving products or services, you must disclose such.

There is no difference in disclosure for product vs. services vs. coupons or discounts. You must disclose all of them.

You must disclose somewhere in the post itself. It is not enough to post a blanket disclosure in the "About Us" section or sidebar of your site. The same applies to tweets. You must disclose in each tweet.There are popular hashtags for disclosure, which include #paid #ad #spon and #sample.

You can also go directly to the source - see the FTC and WOMMA guidance documents on disclosure:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
http://womma.org/ethics/disclosure

References:

SXSW Essentials: Practical Guidance On Blogger Disclosure And FTC Guidelines

What Should Be In A Blog’s Disclaimer? http://goo.gl/6gGf

Generate a blog disclosure policy here: http://bit.ly/bvEM94

Image source: Blogger.com.

Medical blog content and relationship with blogger credentials and blog host

A quantitative content analysis was performed on 398 blog posts from a constructed 1-week sample of posts in WebMD, Yahoo!Health Expert Blogs, and independently hosted blogs.

Most health and medical blog posts highlighted and provided commentary pertaining to medical issues found in external media such as books, television, Web sites, magazines, and newspapers

Only 16% contained actual health or medical information.

Distinct differences in patterns of content were evident between credentialed and noncredentialed bloggers, as well as different blog hosts.

References:
Health and medical blog content and its relationships with blogger credentials and blog host. Buis LR, Carpenter S. Health Commun. 2009 Dec;24(8):703-10.

Comments from Google Buzz:

Shabber Hussain - Now if I can some how know about those 16% medical blogs that "contain actual health or medical information", it should make my day. Feb 26

Arin Basu - I think (I just read the abstract perhaps a closer reading of the full text of the article might be more useful, @Ves, did you have a chance to read the full text?)

* The findings are not unexpected, at least that's what you expect based on "credentialing the blogger who has written the posts"

* There seems on first reading at leas the abstract that there may be quite a bit of bias in that study (just one week snapshot (too few blogs sampled), few selected sites (selection bias right there), and interpretation)

* Not surprised that most blogs contained commentaries published in popular press and journals.

I think that's what blogs should ideally do. Raise awareness, enable and alert people to read & interpret meanings. I'd not expect blogs to replace "actual" texts (well, that's my perspective)

* Which makes @Shabber's point very pertinent, what are those 16% saying, on a one week selective sampling?

All in all, a very interesting article. I think it needs to be closely read and discussed in medical blogosphere. Feb 26

Image source: public domain.