President's Update, February 2016

Antonio C. Bianco, MD, PhD ATA President

Dear ATA Colleagues,

As we move into the 21st century and the millennials become part of our clinical activities, it is important to recognize that patients rely more and more on technology to access and assess medical information. This is seen at our own home organizations, racing to develop Apps and kiosks to facilitate check-in and post-visit instructions, among other strategies, in order to capture and maintain the growing number of patients that are technology savvy.

The ATA follows these developments closely and has focused on a communication strategy that relies on the ATA website www.thyroid.org, which receives close to 400,000 visits per month. The site recently underwent a major overhaul, becoming more user friendly, easier to navigate, and responsive in design to accommodate mobile devices, smart phones, and traditional computer access.

The Internet Communications Committee, chaired by Jennifer Sipos, serves as the Editorial Board for the thyroid.org website and is charged with reviewing the website for appropriate content, evaluating web postings and web-based initiatives as well as, coordinating with other committees such as Patient Affairs and Education, chaired by Regina Castro, and Clinical Affairs, chaired by Mona Sabra, to ensure website content is up-to-date, trustworthy, and effective.

The web site is maintained by ATA staff on a daily basis through our website content expert, Jane Arrington. ATA's Director of Technology, Kelly Hoff, ensures that website development, navigation, content, design are current and reliable across all program areas and website audiences. The ATA web development vendor partners serve to ensure stability in hosting, responsive design, project management, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO.)

Through our web analytics, we find that ATA's top competitors for thyroid web content are WebMD, Mayo Clinic, and Endocrine Web – all of which have substantially more resources than the ATA to leverage website content, key words, and backlinks. Despite this, the ATA shows significant strength and is generally within the top 2-5 search engine results for thyroid key word searches and, of importance – our rankings are achieved primarily through organic searches (key word searches v. advertising.) ATA members can support thyroid.org efforts and rankings just by linking to ATA's Thyroid Information pages from their practice websites and by spreading the word on ATA's reliable online patient resources and social media channels.

The ATA has a solid presence in the thyroid community on social media, including:

• Our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/ThyroidAssociation/
• Twitter conversations: @thyroidfriends and @amthyroidassn
• YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/thyroidorg

Social media content is posted daily by Sharleene Cano, Director of Publications and Membership and Meryem Karad, Coordinator of Membership, Education and Awareness. The primary goal of social media is to use the posts to engage patients and the general public, increasing awareness of thyroid disease and research.

While the number of hits accumulated by the ATA sites is impressive, browsing through different web sites, Facebook pages and YouTube clips can easily lead us to sites that have received millions of visitors, sometimes more than 100 million. Well, tens of millions of individuals worldwide are touched by thyroid disease, thus the potential for the ATA to become a blockbuster as well. A large patient and public constituency makes us stronger. How can we get there?

Part of the strategy is to make sure content is appealing to patients and the public, in a language that is easily accessible. A fantastic example is Clinical Thyroidology for the Public, accessible free-of-charge through our thyroid.org. However, there are things that each one of us can do to disseminate even further the ATA sites and boost visits. For example, when providing the visit summary to my patients via the electronic medical record I have embedded on the instructions a "smart-phrase" pointing out that the ATA web sites are an important source of thyroid-related information. In addition, each one of us can lobby our own Institutions to link the ATA web site to their patient area, and to like the ATA Facebook page. For those of us that have web sites, Facebook pages, linking and liking the ATA pages should be easy to do as well. Lastly, the ATA trainees have a "private" Facebook page with 158 members that is publicized through the multiple endocrinology fellowship programs in the country.

Social media has become a critical area for those of us involved in patient care. A decisive presence in social media, including web site, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, makes the ATA an even stronger society, the official source of thyroid information to the world.

Sincerely,

Antonio C. Bianco, MD, PhD
President, American Thyroid Association