Network analysis of the social media activities around the #TeleCheckAF project

TeleCheck-AF is a novel remote on-demand mobile health infrastructure around teleconsultations for patients with atrial fibrillation. Social media (SoMe) communication on Twitter contributed to the dissemination of this healthcare innovation by using the hashtag #TeleCheckAF. This study aims to analyse the SoMe network behind #TeleCheckAF and determine the key opinion leaders.

Publicly available data on actors and interactions around the hashtag #TeleCheckAF were collected by web scraping from the platform Twitter. With tools based on social network analysis, a social network was created, different communities were identified, and key opinion leaders were determined by their centrality in the network. The SoMe network consisted of 413 086 accounts with 636 502 ties in 22 different communities. A total of 287 accounts that diffused information and/or used the TeleCheck-AF infrastructure were analysed in depth. Those accounts involved users from >15 different countries and multidisciplinary professions. Further, 20 opinion leaders were identified, including four official accounts of societies and associated journals among key opinion leaders. Peaks in #TeleCheckAF tweets were seen after (virtual) conferences and other activities involving national and international cardiology societies. Social network analysis of the TeleCheck-AF Twitter hashtag revealed a wide, multidisciplinary potential reach for the diffusion of a healthcare innovation.

Official society SoMe accounts can amplify the dissemination of research findings by featuring abstract presentations during conferences and published manuscripts. This underlines the synergistic effects between traditional and SoMe-based research dissemination strategies for novel healthcare approaches, such as the TeleCheck-AF project.