Twitter in the operating theater

In 2009, a handful of hospitals began to use Twitter to promote live surgeries. Broadcasts of surgical procedures using the Internet has proliferated with the almost universal availability of high-speed Internet, which makes streaming video possible. YouTube contains dozens of surgical procedures. There is even a website, www.ORlive.com, dedicated to live broadcasts and videos of surgeries performed throughout the world. It provides access to more than 650 live and on-demand surgeries to over two million visitors and 80,000 registered each year. The company says that 55,000 hours of streaming video are accessed each month.

Using Twitter for surgeries has generated much attention by the new media in the United States, even at a national level. But has it caught on and proliferated? Not yet.