Inclusion and engagement of patients can help drive information dissemination in health care conferences and widen research agendas to include new patient-centered domains. By actively including patients in the conversation, patients are able to share their thoughts and express the issues that matter most to them.

Arguably, the ultimate purpose of health care conferences and health care is to improve the lives of patients and their families. By involving patients in health care conferences, a new voice is added to the discussion. These four pillars include accommodation (considering the physical needs of patients), codesign (patients codesign conference along with program creator), engagement (including patients in the audience and as presenters), and education and mentorship (guide patients toward conference stakeholder collaboration). We previously reported on the importance of including patients in medical conferences and identified four pillars of patient involvement in academic medical conferences.

For example, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology saw an increase in tweets from 10,475 in 2012 to 44,034 in 2014 which resulted in 53,001,708 impressions in 2012 (ie, number of times the tweet was seen determined by the total number of followers who could view the tweet) and 154,362,922 impressions in 2014. Twitter is gaining in popularity at health care conferences by allowing attendees to interact with one another and with their greater social networks, facilitating the sharing of information and ideas. Twitter is a microblogging and social media site with 313,000,000 monthly users, 82% of which are primarily mobile users.

Health care conferences present a unique opportunity to network, spark innovation, and disseminate novel information to a large audience. Traditionally, health care conferences are attended by experts, industry specialists, or others involved in fields specific to the conference in question.

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