ABSTRACT
Introduction: Osler developed the 1st journal club in 1875 to reduce financial barriers to keeping up with global medical progress. Journal clubs have since become a widely accessible tool to improve patient safety & quality care. However, maintaining competence today is limited by exponentially increasing complexity & volume while resources stay siloed. In response the “#RadOnc” Twitter journal club was created in 2014 to accelerate knowledge translation across boundaries. Its lung cancer projects have included discussions on globally relevant articles, dual hashtags, & crowdsourced summaries to enhance to enhance clinical knowledge, online communication, & critical appraisal. Methods: We reviewed data from the journal club since 2014. The format included free article access, a weekend-long asynchronous chat, & a live hour including article authors. Targeted invitations were sent prior with introductions posted to a blog. Curated open-access summaries were created using Wakelet to facilitate discussions & allow future referencing. Dual hashtags (#RadOnc #jc) were tested in 2020. Single & dual hashtag data from January & February was analyzed and compared against chat transcripts to determine if dual hashtags appropriately focused content. Selected chats of immediate relevance were thematically analyzed for publication to guide local standards of practice. Results: Fifteen chats (37% ) had direct relevance to lung cancer (including palliative/supportive care, SCLC, & NSCLC) with all attended by article authors. The most recent lung cancer chat had 496 tweets & 2.9 million impressions. Altmetric scores ranged from 15 to 227 (top 5%). We identified 1853 tweets with “# RadOnc” and 1256 (68%) used “#RadOnc #jc”. Dual hashtags were used by 122/558 (22%). Participants spanned 13 countries (radiation oncologists (54/122, 44%), trainees (15/122, 12%), other physicians (9/122, 7%), patients (5/122, 4%), physicists (2/122, 2%), & radiation therapists (1/122, 1%)). Chats averaged 19 dual hashtag tweets/hr compared to 9 other “#radonc” tweets/hr (p=0.036). Most dual hashtag content was related to the journal club (542/542 for January & 713/714 for February). Two recent chats resulted in publications in academic journals. Conclusion: #RadOnc #jc has overcome limitations of traditional journal clubs & remained at the forefront of changing online practices to sustainably facilitate active global lung cancer discussions. This includes use of dual hashtags that are feasible to filter conversations & enable a chat within the hashtag of a growing community of practice. It has nurtured diverse perspectives including multidisciplinary experts, patients, & trainees from HICs & LMICs for rich digitized peer review & discussion. This informed the publication of the first crowdsourced global oncology guidelines for the COVID19 pandemic & emerging standard techniques for SCLC. Aggregation through Wakelet summaries may further reduce the reading burden. Together, #RadOnc #jc is becoming a platform for rapid knowledge translation & creation by encouraging & amplifying the voices of the global oncology community through crowdsourcing, rapid review, and open-access publication. We continue to assess its outcomes for quality improvement including reviewing our lung cancer specific data, chat metrics, author & article impact, & engagement including feedback from all stakeholders working towards improving cancer care. Keywords: Social Media, global oncology, Medical Education