Taking stock of #hcsmeu

When Andrew and I launched the #hcsmeu tweetup beginning of August, we were quiet nervous. As Andrew  wrote here, we did not really know how many of you twitterers were interested in the topic and whether you would find the time to participate. After five tweetups, I felt it was time for me to look at what we have achieved so far.

Well, five Fridays later it looks as though the #hcsmeu tweetup has found its way into many busy schedules.

(Note: my tracking system only let’s me go back one month without extra charges, which is why you see only 4 of our 5 tweetups :-()

Since its beginning, 216 of you participated in the #hcsmeu tweetups with over 1000 tweets , reaching just under 100 000 twitter followers!

You joined across 10 countries from holidays, beaches, board meetings, planes, trains and automobiles (the latter we would like to discourage btw - don’t tweet and drive, please). Also, thanks to Andrew’s Gdoc, you drove the agenda by adding your own discussion topics and suggestions.

As you can see, we have discussed a variety of topics so far. The most important one, of course, being social media and examples of its uses in healthcare across the different countries. Also pharma’s involvement was examined in great detail. For a more in-depth impression of our discussions, note that Rob has done a great job at summarizng our tweetups here.

As you might know, our #hcsmeu tweetup (every Friday 1pm CET)  is the child of the much large  #hcsm tweetup (every Sunday at 9pm EDT). Just for fun, and because I am an analysis junky, find below a quick comparison of tweet volume:

#hcsmeu is about a third of the #hcsm sizes so far! So who says us Euros are not active on social media?

So what is ahead for #hcsmeu? We hope many many more passionate tweetups on juicy healthcare topics!

September will be a busy month: we invited Berci from scienceroll as a guest star to the Sept 18th tweetup. We will also have the first #hcsmeu live tweetup in London on Sept 25th (more to come on this one soon).

For the rest of the year, we would like to strengthen the #hcsmeu community. We would like to create further live tweetups in other EU capitals so that we can meet and create relationships with you also in person We also created two #hcsmeu groups, one on Ideagoras and one on social pharmer, feel free to join us there.

Five successful tweetups later, I would like to say THANK YOU to all of you! #hcsmeu does not only provide me with an incredible source of learning, but I also feel that I (virtually) met many of you through our discussions. I now feel I am part of a community driven by the same passion for social media as a tool to improve healthcare. For me, #hcsmeu is a great example of the power of collaboration that social media fosters.