By Mark Sullivan 
Each month, CREATION.co’s respiratory tracking update brings you the latest insights into the online UK healthcare professional (HCP) conversation regarding respiratory disease.
Respiratory diseases range from mild common colds to life-threatening diseases such as bacterial pneumonia, pulmonary embolism and severe acute respiratory syndromes, such as COVID-19. CREATION Pinpoint® identified 2,125 UK HCP authored posts on this topic between 21 July and 20 August 2022. As mentioned in the previous tracker, this coincides with the summer hypothesis that there is a decrease in mentions and authors from the previous month during summer. Within this conversation the most frequent poster was Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Nick Hopkinson, whose 26 posts were 4 more than the 2nd most active online UK HCP within respiratory disease.
The most active day to post about respiratory diseases for UK HCPs this month was Tuesday 16 August, which had 150 posts. 43 of these posts were HCPs retweeting their peer Dr Sophie Farooque, who shared information on “thunderstorm asthma”, where an asthma attack is triggered by environmental conditions directly caused by a local thunderstorm. As mentioned in Dr Farooque’s post, this is not the first time the allergy specialist has posted about this phenomenon and followers of the Respiratory Tracker may remember this also being a hot topic of conversation at World Asthma day 2021 and was highlighted in the June 2021 Respiratory Tracker.
1/
This week thunderstorms are expected & I want to make people with hay fever aware of a very rare phenomenon called thunderstorm asthma (TA)
If you follow me regularly you will be aware of this phenomenon.
The last episode major UK episode was in London in 1994
Please RT pic.twitter.com/O7AudHsz3G
— Dr Sophie Farooque 💙 (@LondonAllergy) August 15, 2022
Whilst the above mentioned post was the most shared post by UK HCPs in the context of respiratory disease this month (58 shares) it was not the only post to have garnered attention from UK HCPs. Healthtech blogger Pritesh Mistry shared the latest information on integrated care systems with hospital electronic patient records across England. This led to interesting discussions surrounding the most beneficial methods for the NHS to be as connected as possible in regards to data sharing and fluidity.
How many hospital electronic patient records do ICS’s need to knit together? Not much green 😬
Red: ICS with 7+ EPRs
Orange: ICS with 4-6 EPRs
Yellow: ICS with 3 or fewer EPRs BUT at least 1 trust without EPR
Green: ICS with 3 or fewer EPRs AND all trusts have EPR
(From @hsj) pic.twitter.com/lr8uQvM4ea— Pritesh Mistry (@MustBeMistry) August 8, 2022
UK HCPs also discussed the issue of the carbon impact of inhalers, and how this could be best managed by prescription behaviours. It was suggested that HCPs would be able to prescribe appropriate inhaler devices that balance the need to personalise treatment and optimise disease control while reducing the environmental impact of prescribing. HCPs cited recent studies when discussing the most important facets of disease control as well as the ethical dilemmas that arise in deprescribing “less green inhalers”.
Best Principles for Inhaler Prescribing:
How to ensure patient-centered prescribing decisions are made to optimise disease control whilst reducing carbon impact of inhalers https://t.co/n3CY4asAlX@NooriaAzeez @KirstyCavill @KatCleminson @LTHPharmacy @LTHTRespiratory
— Toby Capstick (@TCapper78) August 5, 2022
Each month, we track the HCP conversation relating to respiratory disease.
You can keep up to date with this and other pharmaceutical tracking updates, including COVID-19 developments, within the Tracking section of CREATION Knowledge, or sign up to receive our monthly eJournal with all of our latest HCP insights.
If you would like to dig deeper into what we have seen this month then please do get in touch.
Methodology
- This article analysed the Twitter conversations of HCPs in the UK discussing respiratory disease and related terms between 21 July and 20 August 2022 using CREATION Pinpoint®.
- Between 21 July and 20 August 2022, there were2,125 UK HCP mentions of respiratory disease and related terms, from 1,134 unique UK HCP authors.
