Image via CrunchBaseappreciating the reliable services of Twitter in their time of need; they called it “an excellent system” which let them communicate with their needy patients and spread awareness, both quickly and easily, about where to can obtain their vital medication from. This appreciation note by the doctors was published in The Lancet, considered to be world’s largest medical journals. In the aftermath of the earthquake which hit Japan on 11th March, 2011, almost all the phone services were affected drastically and their services were unreliable, although at that time of need internet access throughout the country remained intact. Hence, gave the doctors the chance to make use of the services provided by Twitter.
Among the published notes in The Lancet, two doctors from the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Dr Yuichi Tamura and Dr Keiichi Kukuda, specially mentioned the challenges their community faced during the catastrophe. They reported that their first priority after the disaster was to reach their regular patients and inform them to acquire their vital pulmonary hypertension drugs, which was crucially needed at the time. They said that “Forming a supply chain for such drugs in the earliest stages of the disaster was difficult; however we found that social networking services could have a useful role.” It was also precisely stated that the ‘Re-tweet’ function of the network allowed the important information to flow easily and vastly among the twitter community.
Further they also elaborated that “We were able to notify displaced patients via Twitter on where to acquire medications. These tweets immediately spread through patients’ networks, and consequently most could attend to their essential treatments.”
One of the doctors, whose notes were published, also pointed out that “Our experience has shown that social networking services, run concurrently with physical support, were significant in triumphing over many difficulties in the recent catastrophe.”
Apart from the profession of medicine, other Japanese professions and institutes have found Twitter very useful and have been using its services after the disaster. The administration of TEPCO, the body controlling the Japan’s suffering nuclear power plant in Fukushima, recently created a Twitter account too. It has also seen a very positive respond and is greatly used to inform the public with updates on the damaged reactors, having scored more than 300,000 followers.
Twitter is seen to be adapted drastically in Japan after the distaste, and also seems to be used very wisely.
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