Using social media to increase the reach of Sccm'S critical care congress.

Abstract

Learning Objectives: Social media is transforming the landscape of information sharing. While medical knowledge is increasing at an unprecedented rate, conferences have traditionally had a reach limited to those who able to attend or purchase the recordings. We aimed to examine the trends in social media growth at the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Critical Care Congress (CCC) and assess which groups were responsible for growth over time. Methods: We used Symplur analytics to assess the impact of Twitter as a platform to expand conversation across the globe during CCC in 2014 & 2015. The number of tweets and impressions were analyzed using the official SCCM hashtags #CCC43 and #CCC44 during the calendar month of the conference. Impressions are calculated by Symplur as the number of tweets per participant multiplied by the number of participants' followers in the specified timeframe and are analogous to views or the reach of the tweet. Tweeters were categorized as either healthcare providers or industry, healthcare organizations and advocacy groups. Results: Comparing the 2014 & 2015 SCCM conferences (#CCC43 & #CCC44), the trend is towards a higher number of tweets (1795 vs. 4448) by more participants (296 vs. 657) resulting in a significantly larger number of impressions (163,187 vs. 6,594,005); in 2015 fewer impressions (84% vs. 39%) were due to tweets from individual healthcare providers and more were due to tweets from industry, healthcare organization or advocacy groups (15% vs. 61%). SCCM membership in the same time periods was 15,692 in 2014 and 15,850 in 2015. The number of people in attendance at these conferences was 4419 in 2014 to 4570 in 2015. Conclusions: There has been substantial growth in the reach of SCCM Critical Care Congress through the use of Twitter in two yr, with a 40-fold increase in impressions. This reach far surpasses the attendance and is in large part due to an increased industry presence in social media at CCC. Medical conferences should continue strategies to encourage growth of social media to improve reach, such as SCCM's formation of a social media task force.