Introducing the global medical community to the information presented at local scientific conferences through nephrology blogs

Introduction

An increasing number of healthcare providers author medical blogs (bloggers) to educate the public and fellow physicians^1–3. Bloggers use this medium to report the events, discussions, and controversies that occur at scientific conferences. As a result, the blog is a valuable tool for the reader who may otherwise not have access to this information. Traditionally, many bloggers have assumed that readers are most interested in information presented at prestigious and popular scientific meetings⁴. Thus, they have focused their blogging efforts on large national and international conferences and have ignored smaller, local meetings⁵. Historically, local scientific meetings attract a smaller live audience, have a geographically restricted educational impact, and do not present much novel medical information. Nevertheless, the value of blogs that pertain to local conferences has not been studied. Given these limitations, we hypothesize that blog readers will utilize blogs about local scientific meetings less than those about national meetings.

Methods

We examined nephrology-pertinent blogs authored by the editors or administrators of Nephrology On-Demand (http://www.mynod.org). These blogs were text-based narrative reports of scientific meetings that occurred between 2010–2012. Blogs were categorized as “local/regional” or “national/international” based on the majority of the audience that primarily attended the live scientific meeting. All of the meetings were based in the United States. The only blogs analyzed were firsthand accounts written by individuals who attended live conferences and not those created from second- or third-party sources. Blogs were posted on Nephrology On-Demand and were freely available to all users at http://goo.gl/28zza. We used Google Analytics to track the number of pageviews, reading time, and location of use per blog for the first 90-days after its availability on the website. Wilcoxon tests were used to compare pageviews and reading time for each blog from different continents. JMP Pro 10 and Microsoft Excel 2007 were used for all statistical analyses.

Results

There were 9 local/regional and 11 national/international scientific meetings for which a blog was available on Nephrology On-Demand (Table 1). The most popular blogs in each category were “Guest Lecture Series: The Cardiorenal Syndrome” (local/regional; 143 pageviews) and “American Society of Nephrology Renal Week” (national/international; 365 pageviews). Overall, the mean number of pageviews was significantly lower in blogs from local/regional than national/international conferences (84.7 versus 160.3, respectively; p < 0.01) (Figure 1). For both groups of blogs, the greatest number of pageviews came from the Americas, but there was a significantly lower number of views in local/regional blogs than national/international blogs across all regions (Table 2).

Figure 1. Box Plot of pageviews by blog category.

Standard box plot of pageviews of local/regional and national/international nephrology blog posts by readers from all regions (red) and the Americas only (blue) with lines representing minimum value, 25^th percentile, median, 75^th percentile, and maximum value within each data set. Where present, inner lines represent 10^th and 90^th percentile values.

Table 2 also indicates the total time spent reading local/regional and national/international blogs. Readers spent a cumulative total of 2.5 times more hours reading national/international than local/regional blogs. However, the mean difference in total reading time between both categories of blogs was not significant (p = 0.25) (Figure 2). Readers from the Americas spent the greatest amount of total time reading the blogs than from any other region, but there was no statistical difference in the time spent reading either category (p = 0.25).

Figure 2. Box Plot of reading time by blog category.

Standard box plot of reading time of local/regional and national/international nephrology blog posts by readers from all regions (red) and the Americas only (blue) with lines representing minimum value, 25^th percentile, median, 75^th percentile, and maximum value within each data set. Where present, inner lines represent 10^th and 90^th percentile values.

Discussion and conclusions

Data from this investigation do not fully support the hypothesis that readers utilized local/regional blogs less than national/international blogs. Although local/regional blogs attracted fewer readers (lower pageviews), the content in these blogs was compelling enough to keep the reader equally engaged as with national/international blogs (as there were statistically similar reading times). The latter finding is surprising because it suggests that information presented at local conferences can keep the attention of the reader as effectively as national conferences. Blogs open local conferences to the global community⁶. In addition, local conferences are conducted at a greater frequency and held at a wider variety of institutions than national/international conferences. The information presented through blogs would be more frequent and present a greater diversity of ideas than blogs of just national/international meetings⁷.

Further investigations are needed to determine what features local/regional blogs need to have in order to be viewed by a similar number of readers as the national/international blogs. Such features, if identified and incorporated, would greatly increase the value of local/regional scientific conferences. This exploratory investigation suggests that once these readers view a blog, the content within that blog will keep them engaged, no matter where it was presented.