image by Microsoft Office

Lung cancer patients and advocates are increasingly joining healthcare, pharma, government agency and biotech industry representatives at cancer-related medical conferences such as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in April and the American Society for Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in June.

Planning ahead for these meetings is essential for getting the most out of your time. The events, which can last several days, often have many sessions happening at the same time in different rooms. In addition to scheduling considerations, the terminology, graphics, and scientific concepts discussed in the sessions can be overwhelming even for seasoned attendees.

Because no one can possibly attend every conference, attendees share the conference experience by posting tweets while at the conference (called “live tweeting”) about significant happenings and new findings. Often, these conferences have specific hashtags–for instance, those attending the ASCO Annual Meeting this year will include #ASCO16 in their tweets. However, live tweeting from sessions presents some challenges, like condensing new concepts into less than 140 characters, and continuing to follow slides while composing tweets.

In our Thursday May 5 #LCSM Chat at 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time (5 PM Pacific), we will share ideas how attendees might prepare in advance to get the most from a medical conference and share their conference experience with others in real time on Twitter. Janet Freeman-Daily will moderate our discussion using the following questions:

• T1: What tips do you have for getting the most out of a medical conference? How do you prepare?
• T2: What concepts would be most helpful for patients/advocates to know before attending cancer conferences? Where can they learn these?
• T3: What tips do you have for live tweeting a medical conference? What kind of live tweets do you value most?

We hope you’ll join #LCSM Chat on Thursday May 5 at 8 PM EDT. If you’re new to tweetchats, please read this primer on how to participate in #LCSM Chats.

Reblogged with permission from the LCSM Chat website.