Mod Pathol. 2017 Jan 13;(2):160-168. doi: 10.1038/modpathol.2016.223. [Epub ahead of print]

#InSituPathologists: how the #USCAP2015 meeting went viral on Twitter and founded the social media movement for the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology.

Cohen D1, Allen TC2, Balci S3, Cagle PT1, Teruya-Feldstein J4, Fine SW5, Gondim DD6, Hunt JL7, Jacob J8, Jewett K9, Jiang X'10, Kaplan KJ11, Kulac I12, Meunier R13, Riddle ND14, Rush PS15, Stall J16, Stuart LN17, Terrano D18, Uthman E19, Wasco MJ20, Williamson SR21, Wu RI22, Gardner JM7.

Author information

• 1Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX, USA.
• 2Department of Pathology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
• 3Department of Pathology, Yildirim Beyazit University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey.
• 4Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Health System, New York, NY, USA.
• 5Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.
• 6Department of Pathology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA.
• 7Department of Pathology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA.
• 8Department of Pathology, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, USA.
• 9Kimberly Jewett Consulting, Inc., Plainfield, IL, USA.
• 10Department of Pathology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
• 11Publisher, tissuepathology.com, Charlotte, NC, USA.
• 12Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
• 13Adirondack Pathology, Glens Falls, NY, USA.
• 14Cunningham Pathology (An Aurora Dx Partner), Birmingham, AL, USA.
• 15Department of Pathology, University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics, Madison, WI, USA.
• 16Hospital Pathology Associates, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
• 17Treasure Coast Pathology, Stuart, FL, USA.
• 18Departments of Pathology and Dermatology, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY, USA.
• 19OakBend Medical Center & PATHO-L, Richmond, TX, USA.
• 20IHA Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and St Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
• 21Department of Pathology, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, USA.
• 22Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Abstract

Professional medical conferences over the past five years have seen an enormous increase in the use of Twitter in real-time, also known as "live-tweeting". At the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) 2015 annual meeting, 24 attendees (the authors) volunteered to participate in a live-tweet group, the #InSituPathologists. This group, along with other attendees, kept the world updated via Twitter about the happenings at the annual meeting. There were 6,524 #USCAP2015 tweets made by 662 individual Twitter users; these generated 5,869,323 unique impressions (potential tweet-views) over a 13-day time span encompassing the dates of the annual meeting. Herein we document the successful implementation of the first official USCAP annual meeting live-tweet group, including the pros/cons of live-tweeting and other experiences of the original #InSituPathologists group members. No prior peer-reviewed publications to our knowledge have described in depth the use of an organized group to "live-tweet" a pathology meeting. We believe our group to be the first of its kind in the field of pathology.