The Top 100 Influencers in Gastroenterology on Twitter

Introduction: High impact tweets have the potential to reach a global audience; Twitter is therefore an important medium for information dissemination and is used by many physicians. “Influencers” - accounts that produce frequent high impact tweets - lead the conversation in different fields on Twitter, and the quality of information they share to the public depends on their level of expertise. Studies have shown a positive correlation between Twitter influence and academic productivity in specific medical subspecialties like cardiology. This relationship has however not been examined in gastroenterology. Methods: We queried Twitter with the search term “gastroenterology” using the Right Relevance Application Programming Interface and extracted the topic scores for the top 100 influencers in gastroenterology. We also obtained their h-index from Scopus. The topic score is a measure of an influencer's social capital on a topic and ranges between 10 to 100. The h-index measures academic productivity. We excluded organizations. We extracted demographic and professional data for these top influencers using information on their Twitter profiles and other websites. We described the population characteristics using frequencies and checked for correlation between the topic scores and h-indices. Results: Ninety-three of the top 100 influencers were gastroenterologists. About two-thirds (68.8%) of them were men and 55.9% were white. Most (78) were based in the United States and of these, 88.5% work in an academic hospital. The most common locations were New York (14.0%), North Carolina, and California (6.5% each). All were board certified in either internal medicine (91) or pediatrics (2). Most (44.1%) were general gastroenterologists, 30.1% were Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) specialists and 19.4% were advanced endoscopists. The median h-index and topic scores were 21 (IQR =28.5) and 84 (IQR=4) respectively. There was a weak positive relationship (Figure 1) between the academic h-indices and the Twitter topic scores (Spearman’s rho = 0.2199; p = 0.031). Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the top gastroenterology Twitter influencers are board-certified gastroenterologists, predominantly practicing in the United States and in academic hospitals. Patients often look to online sources for information before consulting their physicians. The weak relationship between Twitter influence and academic productivity in this study highlights the need to involve academic leaders in the online conversation with the public.Figure 1.: Academic h-index vs Twitter topic score.