Benefits, harms of social media sharing from medical conferences

Naveen K. Rao, MD

I have attended ARVO in the past, and at that meeting I recall a strict rule prohibiting attendees from taking photos of posters. I think it is unrealistic to expect attendees to not use their mobile phones to document and share their experiences at meetings. They will take photos and videos anyway. Even if an organization prohibited sharing information on social media, how would they enforce this policy? My feeling about it is that people are excited about attending these meetings and we should try to capitalize on that excitement, not squelch it.

I’m not sure there needs to be direct collaboration between meeting organizers and peer-reviewed journals, but I do find it helpful to see links to journal articles on my social media news feed. During meetings, since there are frequently overlapping events, it can be helpful to see what sessions my ophthalmologist friends and colleagues find interesting, based on their social media posts. The days of staying up-to-date only by reading journal articles and attending meetings are gone. We are in a digital age and all of us have busy lives. We usually do not have an hour to sit and read an article. We need to condense a lot of information into a very short amount of time — sometimes I only have a few minutes to read an article, and being able to do so via Facebook or Twitter is incredibly efficient.

I understand there may be concern about widely disseminating scientific information before it has undergone a rigorous peer-review process, because much of the research presented at these meetings represents early work. There may also be concern about ideas and data being stolen prior to publication. However, there is also tremendous value to this rapid information sharing on social media. It creates excitement about science, which can trigger additional research studies on the topic. Additionally, if a researcher is so concerned that their data may be stolen pre-publication, it may be advisable for that researcher to wait to present their findings until after their manuscript has been submitted to a journal.

I think the use of official meeting hashtags is a must. This enables attendees, meeting organizers, writers for scientific publications and industry representatives to keep track of the most engaging aspects of the meetings. Twitter can be utilized to notify attendees of program changes and important events, and to quickly create polls for audience response questions. It can also be used during a lecture to collect questions from the audience.

Hopefully, more medical societies will realize there is tremendous potential in social media. Certainly, most national ophthalmology societies (ASCRS, AAO, Cornea Society and others) are already very active in this space. After all, information sharing is one of the primary purposes of these organizations.