Section 1:

Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju:

Hi everyone. It’s so nice to see all of you. I’m Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju from MD Anderson. I’m joined by my great friends and colleagues, Professor Ruben Mesa and Professor Claire Harrison. We are here to do the VJ HemOnc Social Media Twitter Masterclass session guys. So just want to say thank you to both of you for joining. I would like to introduce each of you more formally by each of you saying hi. The reason why we’re meeting here, as the three of you know, is to give folks an idea from our end, to our colleagues out there, why we use social media, particularly Twitter, which all three of us have now become active on, what it can do to help your own personal brand as a physician, scientist, researcher, and how you use it for news aggregation, getting the word out about conferences, meetings, papers, and how you use it to bring everyone together.

So before we get started, just remind everyone this is a learning or educational activity and we do have some learning objectives which are available for this tutorial. And again, it’s to understand and learn how to use, leverage and create with social media. So first, let me have each of my colleagues introduce themselves. Ruben, if you can go ahead and just let folks know all about yourself and maybe why you got on Twitter. That should be our first thing. Go ahead, Ruben.

Ruben Mesa:

Wonderful. Thanks Naveen. I’m the executive director of the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health, San Antonio, MD Anderson. And I, like my colleagues, have focused on myeloproliferative neoplasms during my career. As social media has evolved, I think Twitter is a particularly useful and helpful tool for really conveying issues such as results from trials, from meetings, from being able to really have a quick synopsis and then a key link to some key information, link, picture or phrase. And we can discuss later how this compares and contrasts to other social media platforms but a really helpful piece. And I think it helps tremendously, I think with particularly disease associated communication.

Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju:

Claire, let’s turn it to you and give you…

Claire Harrison:

Okay. Well, it’s your fault, both of you, that I use is Twitter, so any bad habits I have, are all yours. So why do I use Twitter? Well, I just really like the instant way of messaging, the way that there’s an ability to cross reference, take a bite sized piece of information. When did I start using it? I actually started using it on a podium for a patient advocacy group with Ruben, who taught me how to use it. I wasn’t joking. I also like it because I think it’s a really important way of shouting out great stuff that people do. So not just disease related. I agree with everything Ruben said about disease related, but great stuff that my team is doing. Great stuff that other people are doing. So my role in the hospital is a medical director with a remit for research. So I like shouting out about funky stuff that other people are doing because I think we have a big risk of working a lot in silos. So I like Twitter for that. I also like it because it’s on my phone, in my pocket and easy.

Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju:

It’s wonderful, both of you, because it makes me re-excited and reignited about the platform. For me, I was thinking about it for this session. So I look back. Actually, Twitter mentions when you joined. I joined in April of 2014, so that’s eight years ago now and I was similar to Claire’s story. I was at AACR that year and my Twitter mentor, Twitter guru, Mike Thompson, we’ll shout out to him. He exactly, Claire, as you said, for Ruben and me, he’s the one that physically helped me to get on Twitter, Twitter bio, which we’ll talk about here in a moment. And my first application was actually to understand and process what I was hearing at AACR and essentially to take notes. So I would generate content to tweet out about an interesting talk or presentation that would generate some debate or discussion.

And then it’s archived. It’s all there. So my own notes and thoughts and impressions from the meeting were captured there. And then from there, as you guys both helped me so much, we created our own grassroots #mpnsm, myeloproliferative neoplasms on social media, which I really want to say to our surprise and delight has very little spam as they say, very little non-content on there. And then we used it for three platforms. So one is, we use it for our own content generation, as we were mentioning, papers, talks. Number two, it brought us all together, especially prominent of course, my goodness, during this pandemic. And then three, my goodness, now we’re able to analyze those metrics together and see who are the stakeholders, pharma, patients, patient advocates, community providers, academic researchers. And now we understand that everybody has been using it to connect to each other for patient referrals, augmentation of research, collaborations, et cetera. So it is pretty cool to think about the Twitter journey and how we all got on there. So that’s excellent.

Section 2:

Naveen Pemmaraju:

First topic I wanted to bring to you is Twitter strategy. It sounds like kind of an interesting thing to talk about, but I think I’d like to start with Claire. As I’ve seen you use and evolve on the platform, I really love what you mentioned. Which is, you’re already such an established researcher, world-known researcher in the field. But I’ve noticed that you usually use it to shout out your hospital advocacy groups, which you have prominently featured, and they have benefited from your advocacy. Tell us a little bit more about maybe two or three uses that you have been using Twitter, and what you want to do in the coming years with it, Claire.

Claire Harrison:

Thanks for that. You’ve been Twitter spying on me. That’s another thing for Twitter, isn’t it? You can see what people are doing, and it’s interesting, and think, “Hey, I could do this too.” So, I think I just wanted to reflect back. I guess as my roles changed and I’ve had more of a across the organization role around research. And as there was this need to rapidly convey information, and sometimes it’s reassuring data and sometimes warnings to people about COVID, I think that’s where that use kind of came from me. I think shouting out, linking in patient data, linking in new and important safety. So don’t stop your ruxolitinib if you’ve got COVID. Look at this, get vaccinated. So get vaccinated. Don’t be afraid of being vaccinated. Wear a mask. That was really important too, right? Don’t forget to go to the hospital.

And that was actually amplifying some of what the organization was saying. And then, the calling out good work from colleagues in the organization, that’s about recognizing and shouting about exciting staff, linking people in, but also then encouraging those people to get on Twitter, right? And start growing that community. So I think I also tweet as a part of a disease related group. So I’ve a few Twitter accounts, maybe we’ll get into that. So I can tweet as Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS research. I can tweet as myeloid diseases from Guy’s. So that’s another strategy is you might want to have a different handle for a different role, but I personally don’t have a problem with mixing that.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Oh, that’s awesome.

Claire Harrison:

I tend not to tweet about my personal stuff, although just occasionally I’ll tweet ‘I’m really proud of my kids because…’ And maybe we’ll get into that because some people are less happy about that. Some people might use other media channels for that.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

No, that’s great Claire. I am going to ask both of you guys about that. Ruben, same question for you. So same for you. You’ve now been executive director for a number of years and in charge of so many faculty and staff. I feel that you also wield the medium at this highest level where you’re able to promote MPN research, your faculty, upcoming rising stars. What is your strategy these days, Ruben, as you try to think about it, both for your own brand, if you’ll allow me to say, and those of the folks that work with you and for you?

Ruben Mesa:

Well, building on what Claire said, I think I agree a lot with what Claire had said. That many of us wear many hats. And even if you don’t have a senior leadership role, you probably still wear various hats. You wore a hat as a family member, you wear a hat as a mom or a dad potentially, you wear a hat as an investigator in your area or as a member of ASH or EHA. So each potentially have their own role. So I do think some of these social media channels… So I use Facebook for, one, really interacting with the kind of family type things. Friends, family, pictures, vacations, things of that nature. Or two, really with patient groups. So I do find that the majority of patients and patients just by the nature do tend to be older. I think there are many more patients on Facebook than there likely are on Twitter.

So I do think patient-facing things sometimes are helpful on that. But purely family, Instagram. So again, I think purely pictures. And younger people. If you want to hit younger people, you go to Instagram. If you want to hit older people, you hit Facebook. LinkedIn, really around, I think, the business of healthcare. Interacting with colleagues in pharma, academic centers. But the business of healthcare is a bit more LinkedIn. And then Twitter, I think really a bit more about content. And again, usually about whether I’m kind of promoting the center, individual investigators, individual work as we all share with MPNs, or really organizational type pieces. ASH, ASCO, AACR, national advocacy pieces or others.

But I think that the audience on Twitter that most of us really interact with is a professional audience. I think there are some patients, but probably more sophisticated patient advocates that may be on Twitter. The most engaged. These are the people who may register for medical events just to see what the physicians actually hear. But I think your standard patient is probably more likely to be involved with some sort of MPN face group or other pieces. So I think the strategy is know your audience. And again, whatever you’re trying to convey, again, it’s really communication where you’re trying to promote.

Claire Harrison:

May I just interject there?

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Please, Claire.

Claire Harrison:

I really admire the amount of interactivity that you do, but I think if you’re starting out, pick something that you’re comfortable with and think about that. Because I can see what you’re doing on Facebook. I can see what my kids are doing on Instagram, even though they don’t know I can see what they’re doing on Instagram.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

A separate masterclass is needed on that strategy. I like that.

Claire Harrison:

Make sure they have so many friends, they’ve forgotten that you are on there, right? But I think those points are really important. But if our audience are really starting out, just maybe pick one or two. And I think your points about what you’re comfortable with visibility on is really important too.

Ruben Mesa:

And one thing to add to the curse piece. So there’s another hat that people may wear really as it relates to political opinions or other things that they’re very passionate about. And these are important. These are things that help to define you, but they probably should not really ideally be co-mingled with your professional kind of discussions. At least that’d be my suggestion. So again, there’s an area where one, a personal handle might be very appropriate or two, a different venue. I myself, again, have tried to avoid that piece. But if you have particularly very specific views that you really want to be advocating for that are really outside of the realm of medicine, probably a separate handle or platform Is really probably best. Probably don’t want to intermingle both of those things.

Claire Harrison:

Naveen, maybe we should ask you. I think I’m allowed to ask you some questions, right?

Naveen Pemmaraju:

As always, when I get together with you two, I learn a lot. I’m actually really loving this conversation and I think the only thing I would… I agree fully and passionately with what you both said. I think Claire, I love what you said, and Ruben what you said, about starting out and picking your audience, knowing what your strategy is. I like that. I think our great friend and colleague, Dr. Navneet Majhail has commented on this as well, which is sort this latter approach. I think it worked well for me and I’d like to share that with our viewers.

So as you guys said, first I think when you’re starting social media is to just kind of understand the platform. This see one, do one, teach one that we all learned when we were training, I think is a good strategy. So maybe for a week or two, month or two, however long it takes, watch and see and use it as news aggregation. So put your media outlets that you follow, put your JCO, and Blood and ASH and ASCO, your organizations. Put your subspecialty area, MPN, RF, MPN platforms, and then your key thought leaders that you want to follow. Your Ruben Mesa’s, Claire Harrison’s, Jean-Jacques Kiladjian.

And then, now you’ve got about 100 or 200 entities that you’re following, which is a good number. And then, now you’re starting to see the people that you admire and follow, how do they use the medium. I think that that can take people weeks to months. Then number two, I think as you guys said, you identify what is it that you want to do with it. And for most of the folks that are going to be watching us, they want to create their own content and amplify the content that they follow. So that’s called the retweet, as we three know. Somebody has put out, “Hey, our lab paper just came out in CALR mutations.” And then you retweet that, which means you amplify their message. Or quote tweet, which means you show their message and then you make a comment.

And then of course, the last layer of the ladder is creating your own content, which can be scary for some, and even for me, myself when I first started. Is anybody going to care? Is it going to land? What if I put something incorrect that I need to later change? And so I think you got to put yourself out there, right? As with any other media, follow your own local institution regulation, state versus private institution, entity versus your own. I think it’s very important to put on your account who you’re representing. Is it yourself or your institution as you guys both mentioned.

And then finally, as with any media, know the pitfalls and pearls, right? So yeah, if you put something incorrect out there or six months later the data’s changed, tweet it out. “Hey guys, this new data came out. I’m reconsidering this,” et cetera. Or you can always delete a tweet if it’s necessary and then post about that. So I think these are the issues. Claire, I was wondering what you think about that? Sort of a stepwise ladder approach for a strategy for people in our field.

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, I like it. And you read my body language actually, because something you said triggered me. On the views of my own, what you put in your handle. And then kind of thinking as we are representing institutions, if you are going to put that you work… And let’s say if you were put that you work at Guy’s and St Thomas’, have a look at what the organization’s social media strategy actually is and mindful of what Ruben was saying about political comments. And just be aware that it’s like I tell my kids what you put on Facebook, it’s always on Facebook. It’s always there.

So just check what the institution’s strategy or policy is, if you’re going to link with. And if you decide to do what we’ve done, like we built at Guy’s, we built Guy’s Myeloid Center, or we’ve got the research account or the various others, just check because of use of images, et cetera, is also important. And there may be somebody there that can actually help you. And if you have something linked to the institution, they might want you to write a report too.

Section 3:

Ruben Mesa:

A good standard to think is whatever you post would be the same thing that you would be comfortable really if you had a microphone in front of 10,000 people. In our realm, think about that on many levels. One is whatever you’re going to share really ready for public consumption, is it unpublished data that is somehow confidential? Is it some aspect of information that’s confidential with a trial that you’re on that really has not been released? I think be very mindful. Whatever you put out there make sure it’s correct. I mean once you put out there, it’s in the public domain. Even if you delete the tweet, people may have captured it or what have you, so really be very mindful.

Again, if there’s been an adverse event on a trial, you could really adversely impact the trial if you release that prematurely. It’s just like presenting at a very, very public sort of meeting, as well as behaviors. Twitter is its own unique thing where again, it’s a very public venue and there are times that individuals may view a tweet in a very different way.

On Twitter you never quite know how people are going to respond and sometimes can have some really strong reactions to any range of things. I remember I tweeted out some positive results from one company’s trial that we had with, and somebody had a real issue with this company regarding how they had handled the development of a different drug. It had nothing to do with it, but it was this really negative kind of attack that I just chose to ignore, but it’s a very public venue and some of that can occur, as well. Any thoughts on that, Naveen, because I’m sure you’ve probably seen other examples where you have a truly unexpected sort of response?

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Absolutely, Ruben, and I think it’s a great topic for this because we always call it pearls and pitfalls, the three of us, because there are so many beautiful aspects of social media and we’ll talk about it during the session, but I think it’s important to know that there are these areas. There’s trolling, as they call it, which is someone really coming after you. There are ways to mute or block truly offensive behavior. Two, there’s always ignoring and keep moving, on doing your thing, being authentic. And then three, there’s the unexpected chatter that can develop. We’ve seen a lot of that over this pandemic time, both because of disinformation and because of controversial topics.

Ruben’s right. We’ve seen this over time. It’s interesting. The three of us are starting to found and create new meetings together, which has 99.9% been seen as a positive development in our field in bringing people together. But every once in a while you will have an entity or stakeholder who’s upset or unhappy or frustrated and they will make those comments public. And how do you deal with that? Do you ignore that? Do you respond directly? Do you keep moving? It is an essential part. It’s not an advanced part. It’s an essential part of dealing with social media. You’re checking with your own institutional guidelines. What are your own thoughts on that? So I really appreciate it. It’s not all peaches and roses when you get on social media.

Also remember that when you respond to folks, you need to think about your own regulations, laws and practices. Patient reaches out to you, “Hey Dr. Harrison, my hematocrit is 49. Should I get a phlebotomy?” The fundamental reaction would be to message folks with advice. We can’t do that. We have to keep it general. Real clinical advice can only be given in the clinic. As you’re mentioning Ruben, the appropriate measure may be in that situation to say, “Hey, let’s have a clinic visit for this.” I think these are important issues. Claire, I’d love to get your take on that. Sometimes-

Claire Harrison:

I was just smiling. Let’s not ask either of you two if we need a transplant over Twitter or Facebook. That happens. It happens. I was just also thinking about connecting with patients. I was wondering about the Facebook aspect of that. And that’s about your personal thing, too. I was also just reflecting, Naveen and I have been involved with a clinical trial recently and we both retweeted and tweeted on that and that worked really nicely.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yes, it did.

Claire Harrison:

So there’s the connectivity between and the conversations. And if I’m angry, I always try and sit on something before I respond.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Right guys, And this is important. People do ask me that. Especially for the three of us and some of our colleagues, it is important to let people know we are still organic grassroots entities. When I tweet, when Ruben tweets, when Claire tweets, it’s very clear that it’s coming from us. There are entities that can generate paid followers, paid or sponsored tweets, and that’s a dark road for that sort of situation. At least for the three of us, and almost all of our colleagues, you know that it’s an authentic source. It’s us.

I think also the problem becomes when you have a lab or a big group, sometimes folks are designating others to tweet on their behalf and then those processes become juicy and interesting. For example, is the lab team member tweeting on their own? Is there an approval from the PI and then the tweet goes out? Are they helping the PI to generate the tweet or is it completely generated on their own? And then what happens if there’s a retraction that’s necessary or misinformation or accidental tweet? These are new issues that really nobody has the answers to those.

Section 4:

Naveen Pemmaraju:

The next area to ask both of you about is this concept of using the platform to amplify new results that have just come out in meetings and in journals, and I really love Claire that you brought that up. You’re right. We had a very positive experience with that latest trial. In fact, even the journal reached out to me saying how positive this experience was for them and for the field. I do want you to comment on that. Both of you are involved in several practice changing trials that may not have yet been published, but if you miss the meeting, you’re going to miss the results. But with Twitter and social media, people have been contacting me and saying, “Thank you. I couldn’t attend ASH in person this year, but because of your guys’ tweets, I felt like there was a meeting within the meeting.” Claire, I was wondering if you could comment on that nice development in our field.

Claire Harrison:

I love that. I love sitting there, but I think it’s important to still be in the meeting. It’s like doing your emails when you’re in another meeting on Zoom, isn’t it? Now, so it’s great to do it and it’s great to get interest, get people in the room as well, advertise what’s fun. I mean, at EHA there was some really nice stuff, and it’s possible to miss these things in a meeting, and it’s great opportunity to have the privilege to be able to quote on something or give your spin on it. But I would say always good to be polite and always good to be positive, because we’re all human beings. I like the shout out to stuff, especially when meetings now there is this virtual memory. So you could go back and still look at the presentations from EHA, you can connect people as well, which is also good. So yeah, I like that.

And also, your mention about the first time you used it, Naveen, Twitter, that it was like your meeting notes. That’s like that for me as well. What have I been interested in this week? What were I interested in at EHA? What was Ruben interested in at EHA? Where did he go? Where is he now, so I can go find him? Yeah.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Ruben, same for you. Yeah, that’s great, Claire.

Ruben Mesa:

I think that’s a particularly strong use of the medium. One, and something I think, Naveen, that you do particularly well, not only that you tweet, but what exactly are you going to say? And I think how do you, in a concise way… That’s one of the nice, I think, disciplines about Twitter. The number of characters are limited, so you really have to be really quite concise. What really is the takeaway point? And two, is there something really that you’re going to link to? Is a link to the abstract online? Is it available to people outside of some sort of firewall? Is there a key slide or take away slide that you took a picture of that you’re going to share? So I think all those are important pieces. I think it’s key that the thing be already in the public domain. So I think when you’re doing… I mean, that is one of the pluses you’re in there and that these things don’t get put out ahead of time, particularly if it’s your result.

And be mindful all these meetings truly have an embargo, but until it’s presented, and, if it’s in a poster session, that might be when the poster session was, it’s embargoed until that poster session. Or clearly if it’s an oral presentation, then that’s much more clear because once it’s out there, it’s out there. But any communication, what do you say that both grabs the reader, but, two, really conveys the information concisely?As a cancer center director, now, I’m particularly mindful of thinking about how we try to do this. In our world of treatment and clinical trials, it can be a bit more straightforward. I work very closely with our basic scientists. If we’re really going to try to have a concise description of what was found in a cancer biology type report or project or presentation, how do you really say that in a way that people can really capture?

And there’s sometimes you need more information, so I’ve gone to creating YouTube videos of what we call Mays Cancer Center Discoveries, where we take innovative things somebody publishes, something in nature or science, and really the discipline over five to 10 minutes, what is this, how would you explain it to your mom, why does it matter, how does it help them move the needle against the battle against cancer, and then we’ll tweet that out.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yeah, it’s really a awesome use of the platform that both of you’re putting forward, and it brings me to our next module or topic, which is the logistics of Twitter. People actually ask me frequently, and I will ask both of you the same question, how do you fit in time for social media, Twitter, and how do you physically do it? So what people want to know is, and we’ll start with Claire, are you doing this from your phone? Are you doing it from your laptop, desktop? Is it late at night, in the morning, random times? And how much time per day or week? Because people think that we’re on social media all the time, but actually you only need a few minutes here and there to make your presence known. So Claire, maybe the mechanics and logistics of how you tweet.

Claire Harrison:

I only tweet in the way Ruben taught me to tweet. Or you did. Yeah. Under the table. In fact, I was about to take a picture of this conversation and tweet it, because actually that’s the other thing, right? So that’s the other thing is actually calling attention to future events, isn’t it? So, “Come join us at this.” For me, I only really do it on my phone, and I can retweet or reply from the Apple Watch if I have it on. I tend not to do it on the computer, but you can do it from any of these platforms. I tend to do it on the hoof. I don’t go, “Oh, I’ve got my 10 minutes now to do tweeting.” But I do tend to have a quick look at Twitter maybe once a day, see what’s out there, see what people are up to. I personally commute, so I have a 25 minute train journey. Ruben, you’ve done that journey with me. So there’s a connectivity to the internet, so I can do it then. But I’m not doing it deliberately to tweet.

I’m doing it because I also use Twitter cause I want to see what’s the latest at Mays Cancer Center. What is Ann Mullally tweeting about? What’s ASH tweeting about? I love the tweetorials that people put out. I love some of the stuff that Dave Steensma does, like the history of, the history of the body. And I also love the what’s this case? So some of the heme pathologists and Aaron Goodman, I think he does lovely tweetorials as well. We didn’t touch on that. So sorry to go off topic, but I use it for that too. But mainly I don’t do it during the working day pretty much.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Ruben, same for you.

Ruben Mesa:

So I think that our various different strategies, I think the key in terms of generating content is really when you have something to say. So again, it’s a bit like social media. You see people who post that they’ve gone to the grocery store or pumping gas. It’s nice but it’s perhaps a bit too much. Likewise, I think around conferences, one, I think the audience is bigger because people are really trying to see what’s going across. There are clearly concentrated periods we have of communication, ASH, EHA, ESMO, ASCO, other specific events, like clearly next week’s Texas MPN workshop will be such an epic type venue. Two, when really you have results that have come out. I think you’ve done both a very nice job. You have specific manuscripts, particularly once they’ve come out and you can link to the manuscript. I think again, in that setting, I always love when I can really link to something that people, if they choose, can read more. If I tweet about something that has come out from my team, I always be sure that there’s also a press release.

Our communications folks, and I’m sure Claire does this and guys as well, there’s somewhere where you have a much longer description of actually what occurred and you tweet to that link. Today, for example, our urologists led a major study comparing robotic versus open removal of renal cell when they have the big IVC thrombus. It’s a very complicated thing to get rid of. Well, they did a huge study on it, but again, we had a press release, there’s a link to the paper so people can take a deeper dive in. Or you had some lovely tweets around the Navitoclax study in myelofibrosis, or I’ve tweeted several things regarding momentum or things of that nature. Always nice where interested parties can really take a deeper dive.

Claire Harrison:

Make it valuable. Not just, “This is great.” Why is it great? Or even actually, “I like this part,” or, “It’s really interesting. This makes me think about this.” And then actually sometimes there’s a nice dialogue. We didn’t talk about the dialogue benefit too.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Perfect. Yeah, that’s right. Go ahead. Yeah, that’s good.

Ruben Mesa:

Another tool that I think is very interesting, I use it in a limited way so it doesn’t burn people out, but is the Twitter poll where, again, you can set up a poll, and I like particularly if there’s been something that’s very intriguing that may impact practice, really asking people is it going to change their practice or how they’re doing things now. So I think engaging people in the conversations can be very interesting, but the Twitter polls I think can be very engaging, particularly if you keep them relatively straightforward but it’s an interesting question.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

That’s excellent guys. And yeah, again, I learned so much from each of you. Right. I think the logistics are important. So for me, I first thing in the morning among my news aggregation, news media, what’s going on in the field, I do take a quick look at Twitter mainly with the intent to just see what’s going on. Rare to create content, I think first thing in the morning, but coffee line. It’s a really nice way to pass the time while you’re waiting for a coffee or something, and you can actually quickly know what’s going on in our field. So I think first thing in the morning I am looking at it, and then I do check it again late at night after work. And there, oftentimes if I have something to put out there, you’ll have content generation. And again, it’s what you mentioned, an article from myself, my team, or something you want to retweet from a colleague. I think one logistical tip I would give our folks out there is what you both were saying, the anatomy of a tweet, as they call it.

I tend to like four things in my own tweets, and I’d love to see that in everyone else as if you can. So one is have a link. Ruben, you just mentioned that nicely. So the link should be a working link. Maybe you should check it yourself before you put it out there, and it nicely clicks to the greater article. Two, I’m going to say I’d like a picture, some kind of a picture. Sometimes when you tweet a journal article, there will be an automatic picture that’s generated, right guys? So it’ll be maybe the journal cover or maybe a nice graph from the paper, but sometimes not. That may take a bit of extra effort, but that’s worth it if you can. And then third and fourth. So third is to put the @ or the handle of all the folks that are part of the article that you want to give a shout out to, so not just the first and senior author, but maybe take a few extra seconds to see if the middle authors, you’d be surprised who’s on Twitter unless you actually look.

And then I think the fourth and final part for the best tweets out there is if you’re able to with the content, as you both said again here, which is not just factually report it, but maybe give something in addition to, pointing, highlighting, something a little bit more than just repeating the title of whatever you’re putting out there. And I think those are things that enhance people’s understanding, and they can lead to debate and discussion. So I like this discussion about the logistics of Twitter. What do you actually do with these things and do they matter? Guess what? We all just said here that we are looking at each other’s tweets. We do want to see what everyone’s thinking about. And by the way, if something shows up in your Twitter feed 10 or 12 times, that’s the big story of the day, right guys? In other words, you’re like, “Whoa, that’s probably something important.”

Section 5:

Naveen Pemmaraju:

The next topic I want to focus on, Claire mentioned it nicely, it’s actually really important what you brought up, which is, What do you yourself like to see on Twitter where it either leads to your learning or to a new idea, and have you ever gotten a reference or an idea from Twitter that you would not have gotten from, say, a PubMed search, or your own reading or clinic? Claire, I’m going to start with you. You mentioned these Tweetorials, and we really do want to shout out our colleagues, Papa Heme (Aaron Goodman), David Steensma. I love those, exactly as you said. The Diagnostic Dilemma or Quick Hitter Pearl-

Claire Harrison:

Love it.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

…Tweetorial story. Maybe, and if we can think of… What else do you like to see when you’re scrolling through your feed that can either help your practice, or we don’t have to be that specific and serious about it, but something that piques your interest? What does it look like to you?

Claire Harrison:

I’m really interested in data at the moment, and analytics, and machine learning and stuff, so if I see something in another field like this recently, it’s been ISTH. So our colleagues in thrombosis and hemostasis, they recruit masses of patients and they’ve done loads of real world data analysis in COVID, for example, so I like to see that. I like a good picture and the other thing I really like, I just want to call out Jean-Jacques Kiladjian here.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yeah.

Claire Harrison:

See, I love, I get my culture feed from Jean-Jacques

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Right?

Claire Harrison:

Yeah. Also, I have to read it in French, but I can’t always say he sometimes Tweets in French, which is fine, right, because it’s-

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yeah.

Claire Harrison:

…translatable. But I like that. I also want to shout out the fact that I follow blood. I follow hemisphere as well. So hemisphere, these journals and hematologica as well. And I follow ASH and EHA because I’m interested in news in other areas. I’m interested in what my colleagues doing with checkpoint inhibitors. What are we understanding about pathology? What are we understanding about immune responses? I think these platforms that it facilitate greater connectivity and try to reverse the silos. So what… I follow a few cardiologists actually. I’m really interested in what they’re saying about cardiology and management of obesity and stuff like that. I think there’s quite a lot of motivational stuff out there. It’s really interesting.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Wow, so cross-pollination of ideas. Absolutely-

Claire Harrison:

Yeah.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

…right. And so not just in our own field, MPN, rare blood cancers, but learning what’s going on in the greater field. Ruben, what about for you? What do you like to see on your Twitter feed?

Ruben Mesa:

So there’s such an explosion of knowledge out there that, again, it’s a way to kind of distill what other people are finding interesting or people who I like to follow are finding interesting. One, I definitely love it for being able to get a sense of what’s going on in other parts of both hem well as across cancer have a lot of interest in cancer health disparities. So that’s kind of a whole another different Twitter feed that is particularly interesting. And three, there are a lot of creative people in our world that again, are bringing in other aspects that are fuzzy mention A or others or colleagues in pathology or here was a really cool slide or biopsy that we took and here’s why it was interesting.

But it’s also the breadth. Was there something really cutting edge that came out in Lymphoma or Hodgkins or something else? There’s almost no way to really be able to easily track the literature these days. So I definitely agree with Claire. A lot of these key, both organizational or journal ones are key because they’ll also have a good sense of things that they have put out that are particularly newsworthy or practice changing.

Claire Harrison:

New England Journal of Medicine case of the week puzzle. Who doesn’t like a puzzle?

Ruben Mesa:

Exactly right. Exactly right. Or again, some truly groundbreaking finding in a different aspect of medicine that we’re not following like nephrology or something. But that is really cool or interesting to learn.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yeah, that’s great guys. And this concept, I remember when I started medical school, our dean would say this phrase, “It’s like taking a sip out of a fire hydrant.” So we’ve all tried to super subspecialize into our areas, but there’s so much information out there. And one way Twitter helps me to streamline this infinite amount of information. I do use it in some way. So some people use these platforms that actually do it for you. So Tweet deck, hootsuite, there’s several of those out there. Those can actually give you four or five dedicated streams. So you can put, okay, I want to follow hashtag MPNSM hashtag BPDCN, hashtag thrombosis, hashtag et cetera. And then would have actual columns there. That works for some people, most of us after a while I think it’s a bit too much, but so there are ways to do it.

Or two, as you both are saying, curate your own wall or feed. So really instead of following tens of thousands of people, try to streamline it, whatever that number is for you. A few hundred, a few thousand entities where you get a good mix of opinions and comments, but also a mix of single individuals, organizations, journals, regular news, media outlets, so some kind of a mix. So what’s going on in your field. I think you both will share this with me, which is oftentimes some of the big findings. Seriously, big findings in medicine science you oftentimes find out from New York Times, BBC, right? So you find out sometimes, oh, gene therapy for beta thalassemia. I see, okay. So that’s big because we’ve all become so super subspecialized. So I think the medium, at least Twitter for me has served as a way to kind of let me know quickly what’s important, so I don’t miss anything. And I like that as a safety net of information, guys, something to point you to what’s important for the day.

Claire Harrison:

I totally agree. I mean, what a crazy two years we’ve had, right? COVID waves X and we were all connected and we were all connected through social media during that.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yeah, that’s right.

Claire Harrison:

And we connected with patients and we got safety measures out there. But right now, war in Europe. So I use Twitter and social media to connect with that. I also have used it to connect with hematologists in Ukraine. Shout out some of what they’ve been doing, autologous transplants in bomb shelters. Blood safety issues. I think the news thing, but then connecting with people through the news is important.

Ruben Mesa:

In fact, what Claire says is so true. This particular era of how social media during the time of COVID, particularly when we were making it up as we were going, was critical. I am still mindful of those first few days in March of 2020. Well, we really had no idea and it was all very fluid and we were really coming together globally in a way. And again, as we learn different bits and pieces and are you vaccinating people? Do you stop Ruxolitinib? Do you continue going on all these things? We didn’t know, but boy, what a powerful venue for discussion. And you’re right, Claire, I think the visceral reaction to things that truly trouble us all, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine and other things that even what that had implications in terms of the healthcare for individuals, let alone the broader issues.

Claire Harrison:

I remember, I’m just also reminded of a beautiful image that I can’t remember where I got it from actually, but there was this amazing image of a violinist playing on the rooftop of a hospital in Lombardi in Italy, and it was so beautiful. Did you see that Naveen?

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yes. Yes.

Claire Harrison:

And yet all around there were people hanging outside of the windows of the hospital, people in a makeshift field hospital in the car park. Well, it’s so beautiful and the contrast was amazing. It just conveyed a message in such a succinct way. No characters, just an image.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

It’s amazing, the inspiring parts of it in an increasingly fragmented and cynical world. The inspiring image, as you said, Claire, the inspiring message that sometimes learning about a clinical trial in your field, if you’re a patient with one of these rare diseases, as the three of us have often said, it doesn’t matter how rare a disease is, you have 8p11 MPN syndrome. You should know that there’s drugs that are in late stages of clinical trials that are for people with that.

And so sort of the power to reach folks directly, which we weren’t unable to do before. It used to be we presented at a meeting on a podium and maybe a year or two later if it was successful, you hear about it to reach family members and caregivers directly and then to give people hope. It’s a very important thing, particularly Claire, as you mentioned over these last two or three years, in many ways, the three of us have become closer through this exact medium that we’re talking about. And we’ve been able to continue. And in fact, we’ve created new collaborations. The Texas MPN workshop continues, the new venture we’re doing with our friend and colleague, Professor Mohamad Mohty, the MPNC COND in November, and so on and so forth. So can social media be a way to bridge and inspire? In fact, it is, isn’t it guys?

Claire Harrison:

Absolutely. Totally is. Yeah.

Section 6:

Naveen Pemmaraju:

As we think about our closing comments here in the session, I want to have both of you comment. The last topic that I wanted to ask each of you, and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say. So as you process and think about social media, you’ve given so many tips. I want you to try to think about if you have one or two future looking directions or tips for social media either for yourself or for others, what do you want to do in the next say one to two years with the medium? What’s someone or something you want to promote? What do you want to do with this Twitter, which has been very successful for us? Claire, if you want to start us off on that, just anything future looking.

Claire Harrison:

I was hoping you weren’t going to choose me to start with. I was wondering actually. I would like to do some of … so we talked a lot about Twitter and that really suits me because as I said before, I don’t use the other medium so much, but I think really understanding the other mediums. I think the meeting and connecting patients is really important as well as connecting colleagues. I’d like to be a little bit more organized in the way that I use Twitter. I’m still a little bit chaotic, but I’m still quite addicted to it. There are things I want to still learn and I think this isn’t a platform where you are an expert always. You have to keep learning. And so I’ve seen some really cool threads on different things that you can use in Twitter, and you mentioned some of them. So I just want to become a bit more of an expert user and I want to continue to be thoughtful about what I’m doing, and I’d like to encourage other people to join the faculty and grow that and grow other disease areas, too.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

That’s awesome. Ruben, same for you. What are your kind of thoughts and hopes and dreams for your own use for the medium in the coming years?

Ruben Mesa:

So one, I do tend to agree with Claire. I think trying to meet people where they are is a key piece in how these things link together. So I’m mindful as I chat with my kids, they use the litmus test, if I know how to use a social media platform, it’s no longer cool. So it continues to evolve. So the one that they’re on now is something called BeReal. So BeReal has two daily check-ins and you take a forward picture and you take a backward picture. And that’s now beyond TikTok where again, younger people are on TikTok and other things.

Claire Harrison:

They like that though because it’s a real diary, isn’t it? It’s a diary of where they were, so that’s what my kids were saying. They like that because it shows where they are.

Ruben Mesa:

Exactly right. So I think as it relates to connecting with patients, I think there’s greater opportunities in that part. Because I think we’re really flushing out Twitter as a professional connection, but I don’t think it’s really necessarily is with its professionally. One, I’d love to see again Twitter evolve additional capabilities. I think again, the 144 characters is a very arbitrary thing that was kind of niche to start with. It’d be great for that to be a base, but to be kind of a, if you want to read more click here, where people want to try to say something and they do it in 20 tweets that are serialized. That’s a bit of nonsense. It’d be nice if there was some flexibility to be able to have better communications.

Also, it’d be nice if you could really use it as a way to interconnect things. So for example, #MPNSM, you can run analytics on it, but you can’t necessarily easily search and find all the MPNSM tweets. So again, how can we better connect individuals? I think that the international piece is a key one. How do we find some bridge between email over here and Twitter over here in terms of connecting people in a way that is a bit more interactive or durable?

Claire Harrison:

I like the journal idea, actually. I was just minded of, Naveen, that experience we recently had and the fact the journal said, “Please tweet.” I was saying, “Yes, right on. I like that.” So why don’t they facilitate a bit more of that? And I want to ask that question of you, actually, Naveen, because I’m thoughtful of what you would say.

Naveen Pemmaraju:

Yeah, sure. This is really energizing because I think that as we think about the COVID 19 pandemic in particular, Claire, you nicely articulated that we’ve seen new uses pop up of the medium in front of our eyes. I think two areas I want us three in not only our MPN field, but all of our HemOnc fields to focus on is the audio platform. So Twitter itself has a capability, I think it’s called Twitter Spaces, and there are other audio platforms out there, Clubhouse, et cetera, where you go back to sort of the old school. It’s not a teleconference call, it’s more like a fireside chat. I participate in a few of them. Our colleague Vincent Rajkumar, I think has really mastered this platform in our multiple myeloma colleagues. So it kind of goes back to that podcast or audio format where yes, you do have to concentrate and pay attention and there is always the danger that people will multitask if it’s audio only. But I think that’s one way to augment the written form of Twitter. So I’d like all of us, at least our MPN field to explore that together.

And then I think another forward looking aspect of Twitter will be the continued promotion of fellows, trainees, junior faculty, minorities, other groups who are coming up. Because as we three know and we’ve talked about, a lot of folks in their training and formative years of grant writing, networking, this is like three years ongoing where that’s been either halted, abrogated or completely gone to zero. And I think that’s something that I’m really mindful of. I know myself, when I was starting out in the field, meeting both of you, meeting so many people, it was all shaking hands, meeting people at conferences. And some of that is just not possible anymore for all these reasons. So can we all continue to and find new ways to promote folks who are coming in the field to increase and augment their efforts and then really to supply what they would’ve been doing anyway at the networks and conferences that they didn’t have? So that’s something near and dear to me. I know we three, we believe in that, it’s a pay it forward kind of thing, right Claire? Something like that.

Claire Harrison:

I agree. I was just actually thinking about job adverts on Twitter. I like that. Because I’ve seen loads of that, new fellowship, great opportunity, because actually …

Naveen Pemmaraju:

You know, you’re right, I have seen a lot of that. People literally posting their headshot and saying, “Hey, I’m applying for this.” And I know for sure I can tell you both that people are connecting and jobs are happening because of that. Now, it’s an amazing use of the platform. I never envisioned that before. Totally agree.

Well, I want to tell you what, I love both of you so much, you know that. But for our viewers out there, we want to thank the VJ HemOnc team for their social media focus. This is the masterclass series. There’s a couple of ones that we’ve all done together. Folks can find that online. On behalf of myself, Naveen Pemmaraju, I want to thank Professor Ruben Mesa, Professor Claire Harrison for your time, your energy, and both of you for your advocacy for the field, for new researchers, for the patients. Let’s continue to work together, because at the end of the day, we are all in this together. Thank you all and we’ll see you hopefully very soon. Thank you and goodbye.

Naveen Pemmaraju

Naveen Pemmaraju, MD, is a member of the ASH Communications Committee and the ASCO Leukemia Advisory panel; has participated in consultancy work for Pacylex Pharmaceuticals, ImmuniGen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Blueprint Medicines, Clearview Healthcare Partners, Astellas Pharma US Inc., Triptych Health Partners and CTI Biopharma; has received grants from Affymetrix and SagerStrong Foundation; has received honoraria from Incyte, Novartis, LFB Biotechnologies, Stemline Therapeutics, Celgene, AbbVie, MustangBio, Roche Diagnostics, Blueprint Medicines, DAVA Oncology, Springer Science + Business Media LLC, Aptitude Health, NeoPharm Israel and CareDx, Inc., has received research support from Novartis, Stemline Therapeutics, Samus Therapeutics, AbbVie, Cellectis, Affymetrix, Daiichi Sankyo and Plexxikon; and has received travel reimbursement from Stemline Therapeutics, Celgene, MustangBio, DAVA Oncology and AbbVie.

Claire Harrison

Research funding: Celgene, Constellation, Novartis Advisory role: AbbVie, AOP, BMS, Celgene, CTI, Novartis, Galacteo, Geron, Gilead, Janssen, Keros, Promedior, Roche, Shire, Sierra.