Emerging Educational and Networking Platforms in Interventional Cardiology: Expanding Beyond Traditional Social Media

With ubiquitous use of smartphones and other Internet-enabled devices, clinicians have access to a plethora of multimedia platforms that enable them to network, share educational content, and learn. Several platforms also enable resources that support clinical decision making. Traditional social media has been used extensively by cardiologists for several years and now extends to the entire care team including trainees, advanced practitioners, nurses and technologists. Numerous challenges include concerns about patient privacy and security, lack of peer-review and organization, and chances of propagating misinformation. More recently, newer networking platforms have emerged within cardiology to overcome several of the limitations of traditional social media. Additionally, mobile applications have emerged as an educational tool that provides clinicians with easy access to the latest information including guidelines, consensus documents, risk estimators and treatment algorithms. These point-of-care learning and decision-making tools are especially relevant and impactful in a procedural field like interventional cardiology. While professional societies are major drivers of these emerging platforms, there are also other stakeholders including educational institutions and the medical device industry. In this review article, we examine the role of traditional social media and describe newer networking platforms as well as mobile applications applicable to interventional cardiology with a discussion about their relative advantages and disadvantages.