Foto from Thomas Hawk, via http://www.hastac.org

Twitter is not only a social phenomena. Its influence in education and knowledge management is exceeding boundaries.

But imagine you want to use something you read in a tweet… How could you cite it in your paper?

Gunter Eysenbach, @eysenbach, recommendes the use of WebCite in creating a reference like this one:

Eysenbach G (03-04-2009). wondering about how to archive my tweets (and friends’ tweets) locally – any solutions out there? Retrieved from twitter.com, archived at http://www.webcitation.org/5foXLx2sm

Now I can use some tweets on my final GP vocational training report.

Some additional information:

Twitter and Other Mobilizing Tools for Learning and Teaching – Dr. Shock

Twitter as a tool for Personal Knowledge Management - Eric Mack Online

During the last Portuguese National GP Meeting, that occurred in Vilamoura from March 18th to 21st, I and Tom Nolan, from doc2doc, organized a 90 minute workshop entitled Social Networking for General Practitioners and Trainees. This was the first time that Portuguese GPs had the opportunity to discuss and try some of the tools that web 2.0 brought to light during the last years.

Tom presenting the “Social network: what’s in it for GPs?”

The workshop main attractions were the social network platforms doc2doc and, of course, Twitter. Participants had the chance to endure on a live tweet discussion between me, @amcunningham, @brownleader and @JRBTrip who kindly accepted to be available on Twitter for 30 minutes on that morning. A lot of tweets were exchanged among Portugal (Vilamoura), UK and Australia during those moments, mainly regarding the use of Twitter by GPs, electronic communication between physicians and patients and also different working conditions for GPs. You can tweetsearch the discussion with the hashtag #26encg.

This conference was particularly interesting, due to high scientific interest, focusing General Practice/Family Medicine and Quality Assessment, but also regarding the fact that it was the first time that a GP conference in Portugal was being live tweeted. Carlos Martins, @mgfamiliarnet, was avidly following the stream during his daily GP activities 600 km away, in a health centre in Porto.

This was a starting kick for Portuguese GPs in social networking 2.0, we hope everyone feels enthusiastic about it.

And Vilamoura… see you next year!

Ted Eytan, a well-known family physician fom the Twittersphere – @tedeytan – was twitterviewed yesterday by Diariomedico.com, a spanish online medical journal, that tweets as @diariomedico.

The twitterview was remarkably interesting. Aspects like health 2.0 and patient empowerment were focused. To read it please click here and start from older to newer posts.

Some highlights:

This twitterview is the fourth in a sequence of twitterviews by @diariomedico to health tweeple, such as:

• Berci Meskó @berci, from Scienceroll and Webicina (click here to read it #DM1)

• Alex Savic @alensa, CEO at Alensa.com (#DM2)

- Jane Sarasohn-Kahn @healthythinker, from Health Populi (#DM3)

and last, but not least…

- Ted Eytan @tedeytan, from Kaiser Permanente Foundation (#DM5)

By the way, have you noticed the gap? What happened to #DM4? Just imagine: if you click #DM4, read a live-surgery tweeted in spanish a week ago.

In my opinion, @tedeytan and @diariomedico are definitely two must-follow twitterers.

I think it could be useful to list all the family physicians/GPs or GP trainees that are on Twitter.

If you want to add someone, please write your comment below or send me a tweet.

• @amargaridaz – GP trainee

• @amcunningham / www – GP and Clinical Lecturer… interested in everything:)

• @brownleader / www – inner city primary care doctor

• @doc_rob / www – Primary Care Doc, Goofball, Daddy, Hubby

• @doctoranonymous / www – Family Physician, MedBlogger, Internet radio show host, all around nice guy

• @drbonis / www

• @DrHubbard / www – Family physician and publisher of James Hubbard’s My Family Doctor, which is medical information for the general public written by health-care professionals.

• @drottematic / www – Final year med student at UBC, Vancouver. Canadian Family Practice Resident, starting July 1, 2009

• @Dr_Paige / www – Family Practice doc for Family Practice West in Columbus, Ohio

• @GPforhire – Family Doctor, husband, father, geek, gardener, old skool Jedi, um, and loads of other interesting things…

• @holmspun / www – A Family Doc and a Medical Student musing about medicine in the Midwest.

• @japrados

• @jmbhan / www – I am a Family Physician and tech junky, trying to change the world

• @kevinmd / www – Primary care doctor Kevin Pho, M.D. provides commentary on physicians, patients, hospitals, medicine and health care.

• @KittKlaiss –  Small Town Doc, mom of 2, knitter, scifi junkie

• @meducate / www – Global, strategic medical education professional. Interested in clinical practice gaps and outcomes measures. Also humorous speaker/writer globally.

- @mgfamiliarnet / www – MGFamiliar.net

• @rqgb / www – Spanish GP trainee in Madrid

• @ruraldoctoring / www – Rural family doctor, hospitalist, baby catcher, restlessly creative.

• @tedeytan / www – Health Informatics. Patient Empowerment. Washington, DC, Oh, I’m a doctor too.

• @tiagoMGF / www – GP trainee/Family Medicine resident and Freelance Writer

Join the Primary Care Twitter Group, launched by @amcunningham.

Check the full list of medical Twitterers created by @medicalstudent here and take a look at the Twitter Top 100 Health and Medicine rank.

Felipe Coimbra, a brazilian entrepeneur, created twtpoll, a twitter poll application for multiple choice questions that supplies a small URL for tweeting.

Read how Felipe started twtpoll here, and check another application called twtcard.

Ongoing polls

• What should Ben (aka @therubberduckie) do?
• Would you like to consult a physician online?
• Have You Ever Tweeted from the Toilet?
• Are you afraid to become a Twitter Addict?

I’ve been using Twitter for a couple of weeks now, and I can assure you that it has been a breathtaking experience. Twitter is a microblogging service that allows you to send and receive short posts, called tweets, limited to 140 characters. These tweets are displayed on the users profile page and also sent to the followers of that specific user.

These are my reasons to Twitter:

1. keeping in touch with the most recent news in Health 2.0

2. receiving links to new blog posts from people I’m following

3. spreading new ideas and discoveries to a wide community of GPs, physicians and eHealth entrepreneurs

4. reading twitterviews (e.g. read from bottom to top: Berci Mesko being twitterviewed by DiarioMedico.com yesterday)

5. following Lance Armstrong on his daily practicing, Shaquille Oneal or even Monty Phyton’s  John Cleese 

6. having clinical questions to be answered in a snap 

7. accompanying patients thoughts and achievments, eg. DiabetesMine 

This is definitely a powerful tool for enabling global communication and knowledge sharing.

Read more in Wikipedia and this article in MedTech Journal.

You can find my Twitter profile page here.