• McKinley Glover, Garry Choy, Giles W Boland, Sanjay Saini, and Anand M Prabhakar.
• Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. Electronic address: mckinley.glover@mgh.harvard.edu.
• J Am Coll Radiol. 2015 May 1; 12 (5): 513-8.

PurposeThis study assesses the prevalence of use of the most commonly used social media sites among private radiology groups (PRGs) and academic radiology departments (ARDs).MethodsThe 50 largest PRGs and the 50 ARDs with the highest level of funding from the National Institutes of Health were assessed for presence of a radiology-specific social media account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Measures of organizational activity and end-user activity were collected, including the number of posts and followers, as appropriate; between-group comparisons were performed.ResultsPRGs adopted Facebook 12 months earlier (P = .02) and Twitter 18 months earlier (P = .02) than did ARDs. A total of 76% of PRGs maintained ≥1 account on the social media sites included in the study, compared with 28% of ARDs (P < .0001). The prevalence of having an account on the social media sites for PRGs was: Facebook, 66%; LinkedIn, 56%; Twitter, 42%; YouTube, 20%; Pinterest, 4%; and Instagram, 2%. The prevalence of radiology-specific social media accounts for ARDs was: Facebook, 18%; LinkedIn, 0%; Twitter, 24%; YouTube, 6%; Pinterest, 0%; and Instagram, 0%. There was no significant difference between ARDs and PRGs in measures of end-user or organizational activity on Facebook or Twitter.ConclusionsUse of social media in health care is emerging as mainstream, with PRGs being early adopters of Facebook and Twitter in comparison with ARDs. Competitive environments and institutional policies may be strong factors that influence how social media is used by radiologists at the group and department levels.Copyright © 2015 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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