As I combed Twitter Monday morning, I stumbled upon HenryFordNews, which belongs not to the auto manufacturer, but rather to the health system that Mr. Ford helped found in 1915.  The topic of conversation for most of the day was to be a live feed from a Robot Assisted Cystectomy that was taking place at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and broadcast live to an audience of 400 physicians at the International Robotic Urology Symposium, taking place at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas.  

Now normally I am a pretty squeamish person, but the novelty of Ford’s Twitter innovation from the OR had me hooked, and I spent a large part of the day checking in on the lastest tweets provided by Dr. James Peabody.

The patient in the procedure, who remained anonymous (and gave consent to the tweeting), was a 54 year-old man, who had been diagnosed with bladder cancer.  The broadcast procedure featured the removal of the patient’s bladder and prostate. Using robotic assistance, the procedure was performed faster and more safely than if it had been done completely manually, as I learned from the tweets.

The purpose of the broadcast feed to the Bellagio was to educate physicians in attendance at the Symposium (who could ask live questions of the Drs.), and it was one of a number of the event’s video procedures.  The purpose of the live Twitter feed, in the words of Ford, was: to expand exposure of medicinal and surgical techniques and explore new uses of technology.

When reading through the tweets, I found a very interesting blend of both information and self-promotion i.e. Henry Ford’s large experience with robotic prostatectomy (> 4000 cases) helps us with other robotic procedures, like cystectomy and to date, we have the largest robotic prostatectomy experience world wide. Now it’s likely that Ford’s intentions in tweeting the whole experience were exclusively in the interest of education, but I think that they managed to strike a successful balance between the informational and the promotional in their updates – a sometimes difficult balance to achieve. Overall, I commend HenryFord on taking such an innovative step and I found the experience fascinating. Frankly, I’m astonished I was able to make my way through most of the tweets without my stomach getting the best of me.

Here’s to hoping the experimental use of Twitter will help spread awareness not only of HenryFord, but also of some very important health concerns and possible treatments/interventional procedures.

Now that Twitter’s been in the OR, where to next?