Following the publication of 'Medicine, morality and health care social media' in BMC Medicine, author Farris Timimi (Medical Director, Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, @FarrisTimimi) joined his colleague Lee Aase (Director, Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, @LeeAase) and BMC Medicine Editor Sabina Alam (@BMCMedicine) in a twitter chat to further discuss the ideas raised in Timimi's commentary.

Here follows a summary of the discussion with a selection of the contributions.

Following a few introductions the discussion started with a number of examples of the use of social media in healthcare. PatientsLikeMe, a data sharing social networking site which aims to allow members to share and search information on the symptoms and treatment of a condition. Another independent site facilitating the sharing of patient's experience was Patient Opinion.

As well as social networking between patients, the opportunity that social media provides for medical specialists to communicate information was a key theme. Examples of content curation or crowdsourcing included Wikipedia entries (close in quality to textbooks in some areas).

Further examples of social networking platforms and content distribution channels were also given, such as Twitter Journal Club, which provides a place where doctors, medical students, and anyone else who is interested, can discuss publications relevant to medicine.