Novel use of Twitter to disseminate and evaluate adherence to clinical guidelines by the European Association of Urology

Stacy Loeb, Morgan Roupret, Inge Van Oort, James N'dow, Marc van Gurp, Jarka Bloemberg, Julie Darraugh, Maria J. Ribal

The European Association of Urology was the first scientific association to systematically convert the clinical guidelines into social media posts for dissemination through twitter. Posts were classified using the hashtag #eauguidelines and each post was <140 characters which is the limit for twitter. The goals of this project were to increase dissemination of the guidelines, and to test adherence with guidelines recommendations through a series of twitter based-polls. During the first 18 months of this project (January 2015 - June 2016), there were 8,709 posts about the guidelines, with a total reach of 9,117,746 impressions. During the past 6 months, a total of 16 polls have been conducted asking whether participants practice in accordance with a specific guideline recommendation. These polls have had an average of 126 participants and average reach of 3013 impressions. Adherence with the guideline recommendations has ranged from 13 to 92% across polls. Herein, we demonstrate a proof-of-principal study on the use of twitter© as a platform for the dissemination and real-time evaluation of clinical guidelines. These strategies should be considered by other professional societies to increase the reach and obtain rapid feedback on guidelines recommendations. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.