Physicians aren't quitting Twitter over Elon Musk!

Physicians aren't quitting Twitter over Elon Musk!

It’s been a chaotic month for Elon Musk and his recent acquisition, Twitter. Musk's tenure at the company so far has been mired in controversy as the mercurial billionaire makes changes to the platform and cuts staff, and a number of high-profile users have already jumped ship.

However, amidst this controversy, social monitoring captured via Ferma.AI shows that MDs are not ready to quit Twitter just yet.

Ferma.AI’s study found that 75% of physicians (sample size = 566) who were active during scientific conferences (ASCO, ASH, AAN, ESMO, etc) continued to post on Twitter this week. The physicians in the sample were manually vetted and mapped to their NPIs.

While the future looks bleak

Twitter’s always had challenges with misinformation, Musk induced further chaos by enabling imposters to get verified for $8. At its peak, Eli Lilly issued an apology for a misleading message from an imposter account and stopped all its advertisement campaigns. Musk is planning to relaunch a rock solid version of the paid service and it remains to seen if that can be done.

Physicians are planning to stay

Despite expressing frustration, many physicians, including key digital opinion leaders, have decided to stay on Twitter because the social media platform has become an essential tool to help patients, advance science, and fight misinformation.

Even the Commissioner of FDA, Dr. Robert Califf, encouraged people not to abandon Twitter.

Pharma should increase their engagement

Amidst the chaos and controversy, Twitter remains a vital resource to MDs for healthcare-related information. And biopharma firms that manage to maintain positive relations with the #MedTwitter community, even during this chaos, would end up increasing their brand equity.

ZoomRx Social Listening, powered by Ferma.AI, helps biopharma companies monitor the dynamic and rapdily evolving conversations taking place on Twitter and many other social networks. To learn more about how to measure and maintain positive relationships with the #MedTwitter community, book a 30-minute meet here.