Personalised cardiovascular care gets HCPs talking about stroke ahead of ESC

From 30 August – 02 September 2024, healthcare professionals (HCPs) of a variety of specialities will be flocking to the heart of London for the annual European Society of Cardiology (ESC) congress. 

The spotlight for this years’ conference will be ‘Personalising Cardiovascular Care’. This has been a significant subject of discussion for online HCPs over the past year; our analysis, using the world’s most comprehensive HCP social listening tool, CREATION Pinpoint®, found that over 18,000 HCPs have posted more than 57,000 times on X (formerly Twitter) about cardiovascular (CV) care and personalised treatment since May 2023. The congress website too emphasises the noteworthiness of this topic, stating it is “a topic devoted to empowering patients through tailored treatments to improve outcomes, reduce risk, and redefine the standard of care.” There will be over 40 sessions at the congress dedicated to this spotlight.

The CV Care Space:

As demonstrated by the large number of posts, it is clear that cardiovascular care is of great importance to HCPs. Within these thousands of posts, there are two disease types which are by far the most prominent within the wider CV landscape: stroke and heart failure.

When discussing stroke, HCPs readily shared and celebrated new innovations and research. This ranged from new therapeutic treatments, to practical emergency medicine advancements, all which increase the likelihood of stroke survival.

In the heart failure conversation, posts focused on medical education gained the most reach. Some HCPs shared stories of the difficult working situations they have faced when treating heart failure. Others shared care tips for specific heart failure situations, such as James Januzzi, a cardiologist in Boston, who outlined a care plan for those with acute heart failure.

The Personalised CV Care Space:

Looking at HCPs’ posts about personalised cardiovascular care revealed some interesting insights regarding technological advances. Our analysis found over 100 HCP posts mentioning the use of AI to aid personalised care. This was especially prominent with relation to hypertension (through the use of blood pressure monitoring) and other chronic diseases. 

These topics were presented at the 2023 ESC conference, and will carry increasing weight in London this year, with there being 38 sessions (including poster presentations) that comprise an AI element.

Apart from the AI conversation, hypertension was still a large part of the personalisation conversation; over 10% of posts referred to the disease type. This was largely due to various new releases of data being shared in the community. Eight HCPs shared Intensive Care Specialist Yuki Kotani’s post about a review paper which suggested more randomised controlled trials are needed on “personalized BP target management”.

Nurses and Personalised CV Care:

In any care setting, the opinions and expertise of nurses are paramount for excellence and results, especially when targeting a personalised care plan for individual patients. One of the key tracks at ESC congress 2024 is nurse-focused, and as such, we tracked the opinions of nurses, who accounted for over 108 of the 1,000 most active HCPs posting about CV care and personalised treatment since May last year. These nurses combined for over 2,592 X posts (an average of 24 posts per author); these posts garnered just shy of 14,000,000 impressions.

The specific Nurses and Allied Health Professionals track has four sessions focusing on curriculum updates and – in line with the spotlight – different aspects of patient care. Due to these sessions, one might expect there to be more buzz from nurses in the lead up to the congress. Our research, however, suggested that this wasn’t the case. While the proportion of nurses amongst all active authors did increase slightly between May and July of this year compared to 2023 (10.5% in 2023 to 11.1% in 2024), explicit mentions of the hashtag #ESCCongress actually decreased. 

Nurses followed the trend of discussing stroke and heart failure care, connecting with each other about the issues and queries they have in relation to care issues. There were a few incidences of sharing educational materials and spreading awareness, but the majority of posts covered a wide range of smaller, more niche topic areas, emphasising the plethora of care disciplines nurses are entrusted with.

Additionally, nurses discussing personalised care shared updates from different congresses and meetings, including ESC. One UK-based nurse, Louise Brady, emphasised the value of a team approach to personalised care, including collaborating with healthcare assistants to achieve this. She further highlighted how vital preventative actions such as blood pressure checks are as the first step to a personalised care plan.

It is clear to see that the online HCP conversation shares a focus with the ‘Personalising Cardiovascular Care’ spotlight of the upcoming ESC congress, whilst also providing further insight and nuance into the real, unfiltered views of HCPs. Nurses are the beating heart of the non-specialist CV care space, and are a vital part of any team of HCPs delivering a personalised care plan.

For more ESC related content, keep an eye on the CREATION.co LinkedIn page, as there will be daily updates pumped out on HCP reaction to the biggest stories emerging from London.