#ASKWAF Roundtable Session at the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium

Interview With Edward J Schloss, MD

In this onsite interview at the Western Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Symposium, we talk with Edward J Schloss, MD, from The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Please introduce yourself.

Hello, I am Edward J Schloss. On Twitter, I am @EJSMD. I am a cardiac electrophysiologist working out of Cincinnati, Ohio. I just had my 25th year at The Christ Hospital. I mainly do devices, but I enjoy all aspects of electrophysiology (EP).

What can you tell us about the #EPeeps community on Twitter?

The hashtag #EPeeps was coined by a colleague, Steve Zweibel, who is an electrophysiologist in Connecticut. He was smart enough to realize as this nascent community of electrophysiologists was forming on Twitter that we needed something to bring us together. So that became a hashtag that has become pretty universal; when people want to find each other, that is the way we do it. On a bigger scale, it is basically electrophysiologists who share as a community on Twitter. There are just barely people heading into Mastodon now, but I think we are pretty much going to stick with Twitter—it feels that way. In the early days, there was Wes Fisher, John Mandrola, and Janet Han. I remember meeting Janet during late breakers. There only used to be like 4 people doing tweets at Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) meetings. We found @netta_doc (Janet) and she became an early part of the community, which just grew and grew after that. So, that is what the #EPeeps community is.

How have you seen this group evolve and grow?

It started out as a very small group of people. We would see each other in person at HRS meetings where we would have a tweetup, and we still do, where people meet each other. But it started out very tiny. I remember the year when HRS actually told us they would go ahead and give us badges so we could sit up front. There were only like 6 of us there. That was maybe 2012 or 2013, and then it really took off. What I also found is that it interfaced nicely with other forums, such as what became #medtwitter with the interventional community as well as the broader community of people that are interested in study design and interpretation. I think there is so much we could talk about, but so much grew out of that beyond just interactions with colleagues, it also kind of turned into a post-publication, peer review where things get hashed out. It is an opportunity to meet with experts. It gave me access that I would never have had as a community electrophysiologist with minimal academic credentials to actually be able to come to meetings like this and know people—that all grew out of Twitter.

Tell us about the #ASKWAF roundtable session that took place at the Western Atrial Fibrillation Symposium.

#ASKWAF is a roundtable that takes place at the end of the meeting. It has been the tradition for at least 6 years. I participated in it for the first time 5 years ago. I think John Mandrola was doing it before I ever got started. Nassir Marrouche has been very pioneering in a lot of things, and one of those things is needing social media at meetings. I do not even ablate AFib—I am a device doctor. I see people with AFib, but it is not the focus of my practice. So when I come to Western AFib, it is more about enrichment and meeting colleagues than it is practical information that I am going to use tomorrow. Before I began attending this meeting, I found I was watching the Twitter stream blow up with information from this meeting, and it was so well crafted and the people that were here were providing such good material. I remember talking with John Mandrola about how great this meeting is. So I ended up coming, and not long after that, I got invited to be on the panel. The idea of #ASKWAF is to take what grows out of social interactions, put it in the real world, and talk about the ideas and things that come out of this meeting, the things that bubbled up to the top of the conversation, and put it to a panel, and get it archived on Twitter. The dialogue can then continue long after the meeting.