The EBM Twitter Idea

We recently had the opportunity to have a huge plasma screen installed in the library, which we could use to post news and information to our users. I've seen these things before and it was obvious that for it not to be a huge waste of money it had to be:

• Positioned somewhere where people would see it and read it (you'd think that would be obvious to anyone installing this kind of thing... if only!)
• Contain interesting stuff that was updated regularly - if you saw exactly the same content a month on, then you've got a turkey on your hands... but if you could come back the next day, or even a few hours/minutes later and see something different? Well, then you've got something that people will actually look at

So the question was how could we update it? Sure, PowerPoint will do the job, but it's not exactly exciting, and you have to edit the file each time you want to make an alteration. No, what we really want is to embed an RSS feed or something similar...

...and that's when I thought about Twitter.

Here's the idea:

• In amongst the PowerPoint-style, image-intensive banner ads how about having a live stream of news
• Push it via Twitter and you've got an easy way of populating it with brief bits of news
• You want the display screen to have lots of fresh news - much like you would a Twitter feed: it's a natural fit!

But it still left the problem of what to post - dull library news about the new book we've just bought won't cut it. Stuff about evidence based medicine, research, medicine in the media however... well, that might just be the ticket. Hey, if it works for Ben Goldacre, why not for us, too?

Even better, for some while we've been looking to get more involved with the clinical teams in the hospital - supporting them more directly with literature searches, document supply and - importantly - things like critical appraisal. Maybe we could use this as a mechanism of prompting clinical staff to think more regularly about searching the literature more effectively, and the use & appraisal of evidence.

As Hannibal would say: "I love it when a plan comes together".



(Oh, I should say that we didn't get the plasma screen (maybe next year?), but now I've got the idea I'm going to get it up and running anyway.)