Tuning into #MedTwitter

Leveraging #MedTwitter and Infegy’s Social Dataset for insights into provider conversation

We've spent the last few Insight Briefs exploring patients' and pharmaceutical companies' perspectives on healthcare, one of the fastest-growing industries in America. Let's now examine the final 'p' in the tripod of American healthcare: the provider.

At their core, doctors and researchers are scientists. The field of medicine, like any other science, progresses through peer-reviewed research and the subsequent discussions around it. This creates a feedback loop: A researcher publishes their findings, which then serve as a foundation for further advancements by other scientists.

With a good social listening tool, you get a seat in the research lab or academic classroom. We identify those conversations in aggregate using the simple hashtag #medtwitter (now #medX), letting you dive into specific sub conversations that interest you most. MedTwitter is a community on Twitter where healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, medical researchers, and students, share knowledge and discuss medical topics.

Gaining this understanding can be critical for your brand, healthcare practice, or pharmaceutical company: Understanding the cutting-edge research underlying specific conditions helps you keep abreast of medical science's rapid progression. Moreover, it can help you better understand the providers themselves, which can help you craft messages to them, which will, in turn, trickle down to conversations with the patients themselves.

Figure 1: Screenshot of Infegy Starscape’s query builder.

Source bios for audience confirmation

When conducting exploratory data analysis, especially in broad-based research like ours, you should confirm that you're looking at the right content before reporting your findings

Since we're conducting a provider audience analysis, let's stop at Source Bios before diving into any insights. People on social media platforms describe themselves within their bios. Usually, they'll disclose their profession, marital status, and geographic location. We aggregate the Topics, or important nouns, adjectives, and verbs, that appear across the audience accounts driving the underlying conversation and report the most significant ones.

Figure 2: Source bios of accounts using the hashtag #MedTwitter (May 2021 through May 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Immediately, we know we're in the right ballpark—we see indicator Topics like "medicine," "doctor," or "clinical." Based on our experience conducting audience analysis and underlying knowledge of the medical field, we'll draw two takeaways here.

1. Researcher vs. clinical division

Within the provider space are two general categories—the researchers developing drugs and the clinicians actually seeing patients. The Source Bios driving the #medTwitter conversation mirror this professional division. On the research end, we see Topics related to research ("PHD," "University," or "Professor"). On the clinical side, we see Topics like "Physician" or "Surgeon."

2. Titles suggest trustworthy conversation

Glancing at the topics here, we immediately get clues that these folks know what they're talking about. Most obviously, it is the word "views," which often appears within source bios: "Views are my own," which suggests the underlying account is a subject matter expert who works at a medical institution but still follows research on their own.

Figure 3: Sample Twitter account with the phrase “views are my own,” discovered using Infegy Social dataset.

Narratives showing physician conversations

Now that we've confirmed we're looking at the correct conversations, let's use Infegy's Narratives to summarize and visualize the conversation. With Narratives, we isolate each post's most important topics. Then, we link those topics together to draw clusters of related documents. These clusters enable analysts to see the broader picture associated with a query while allowing them to dive into the weeds.

Figure 4: Narratives pertaining to #MedTwitter (May 2021 through May 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

When drawing Narratives for #medtwitter, we found three large clusters among the conversations:

1. Physicians in training

This cluster talked about the intensive application and training process of becoming a doctor in the United States. Many students post about their education journey online on #MedTwitter so that the cluster will tell their stories.

2. Diagnosis and treatment

This cluster talks about the clinical half of #MedTwitter. Often, providers talk about typical patients and treatments they've been prescribing. While keeping abreast of research, these doctors tend to be on the more practical, patient-focused end of medicine.

3. Medical research communities

This cluster deals with the research half of #MedTwitter, which we alluded to above. Our algorithm selected hashtag labels as Topics. These labels give us clues and insights into various sub research communities. Remember, Twitter users identify themselves using hashtags. While the overall hashtag we're using here is #MedTwitter, endless numbers of linked medical communities reference the almost infinite subspecialties within medical research.

Figure 5: Linked hashtags showing deeper medical specialty communities conversations (May 2021 through May 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Diving deeper into the providers you want to target

So far, we've looked at the top level (e.g., just #medtwitter conversation). However, as we've alluded to thus far, medicine can get very specialized. As a result, if you want to dive deeper into a specific field of medicine (say you're targeting what radiologists are saying about a new machine). Social listening makes that easy to do. We'll quickly update our query to look for #radtwitter within the #medtwitter universe.

Figure 6: Radiology-related discussions on Med Twitter (May 2021 through May 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Topics are discussed radiology-focused while retaining the clinical terminology we've used before. This ability to focus and zoom in can be beneficial for researchers trying to find out what a hyper specialized doctor thinks about a particular topic without asking a bunch of them via a survey or a focus group.

Takeaways for your brand

Using a social listening tool like Infegy’s product suite is essential for brand strategists and pharmaceutical companies. It allows you to tap into the real-time conversations of medical professionals, giving you a front-row seat to the latest research and clinical practices. By understanding these insights, you can stay ahead of industry trends, craft targeted messaging, and ultimately build stronger connections with both providers and patients. This direct access to the evolving dialogue within the medical community can be a game-changer for your strategic planning and decision-making.