Twitter Opens a Door to Iowa Operating Room - ABC News - 0 views
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Ashley Graff on 15 Sep 09I first read this story in the DA and it was very intriguing. A hospital in Iowa has allowed surgeons to start "tweeting" the process of their surgery to the patient's family members. It is an easy and efficient way to follow a patient's progress as they go under the knife. The patient's family in this article tracked the developments from a laptop computer in the hospital's waiting room. One of the daughter-in-laws even kept tabs from work. The surgeon sent more than 300 tweets over more than three hours from a computer outside the operating room. Over 700 people followed them, some even asking questions. This is a great way to get glimpse into an actual operating room. Iowa has not been the first hospital to use Twitter, others include Children's Medical Center in Dallas, which tweeted in May when a father donated a kidney to his son, and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where officials have tweeted about several surgeries since January. My question is, is could I use the "tweets" this surgeon is sending and write my own article about the operation? Are the surgeons' tweets copyrighted?