Top EASD 2021 online conversations revealed
New analysis of healthcare professionals’ social media posts during this year’s European Association for the Study of Diabetes congress has unveiled the key takeaways relating both to diabetes discussion and the event itself.
Compiled by specialist digital healthcare insights and consulting firm, CREATION.co, the analysis was sourced by an AI-powered, human-verified database of nearly 4,000 healthcare professionals.
The top research finding identified that the discussion around the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2021 was much lower than previous years.
Following the trend of 2020’s virtual summit, the conversation during this year’s meeting dropped by more than 28%, falling from 1,384 to 985 in the space of a year.
Previous research has found that healthcare professionals were ‘disappointed’ with not being able to interact with peers during the pandemic.
According to the findings, trail data generated the most discussion amongst healthcare professionals throughout the 2021 congress, with more than 150 posts published on trial data during the virtual event.
In addition, treatment, diagnosis, testing, diabetes awareness and education and risk and prevalence of diabetes sparked multiple online discussions.
Among treatment posts, Farxiga (Dapagliflozin©) was the most discussed product at EASD 2021 as healthcare professionals celebrated its ability to lower the relative risk of adverse cardio-renal outcomes in people with diabetes.
It has also been found to decrease the chance of new-onset diabetes for people with heart failure or chronic kidney disease.
By breaking down the analysis further, it was found that found that type 2 diabetes (385 posts) received twice as many mentions at this year’s EASD than type 1 diabetes (169 posts).
Within the type 2 diabetes discussion many healthcare professionals focused on the current treatment options available to people as well as the potential future treatments.
In addition, these posts focused on the impact of weight loss on type 2 diabetes in a holistic approach for people with the condition, as well as the challenge of implementing a new weight-centric primary treatment goal in those with type 2 diabetes.
The majority of the content at EASD 2021 was shared posts rather than original posts, meaning that six of the top ten retweeted accounts were healthcare professionals with the other four being a combination of advocacy groups and medical journals.
Daniel Ghinn, CEO and Founder of CREATION.co said: “The decision to host this year’s congress online has once again led to a reduction in overall social media activity surrounding EASD.
“Despite this, healthcare professionals’ online discussions still offered revealing insights into the key priorities and interest areas for those participating in it. For example, the analysis highlighted how throughout this year’s congress trial data was a prominent theme among healthcare professionals’ online discussions, particularly surrounding the publication of new trial data.”
He added: “It also shows the heightened interest surrounding promising new drugs, like Farxiga (Dapagliflozin©), that have been introduced to the market and the positive outcomes these are generating.
“More generally, this research offers yet another window of insight into how online analysis of the views and sentiments of healthcare professionals are offering huge potential for collecting real-world evidence for an array of different areas of public health.
“These can range from what’s driving demand, to other areas such as lesser-known side effects of drugs and unknown interactions. It represents a fast-growing tool in public health analysis whose significance is likely to grow in the coming decades.”
CREATION.co provides insights and consulting to inform health strategy, communications, and policymaking among some of the world’s largest healthcare companies, government organisations.
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