Background: In April 2017, the Centre for Evidence-Based Chinese Medicine started to disseminate translated simplified Chinese Cochrane evidence via its WeChat Official Account (similar to a blog). This has changed the passive acceptance of the audience in the era of traditional media. WeChat users can subscribe to an official account of interests.
Current situation: In each post, we push a plain-language summary (PLS), blogshot or podcast with text and images, as well as a link to the original text at Cochrane.org. By February 2018, we had posted 95 PLS,14 blogshots, and four podcasts, which attracted 9198 views. The five most viewed posts concern treatment and diagnosis for conditions with public interest (Table). About 20 volunteers became interested in Cochrane translation after reading our posts. The number of subscription has reached 990.
Despite the continued increase in public attention, it is still modest considering the large number of WeChat users in China (889 million). We plan to develop our strategy further.
Future plans: We recommend that translation volunteers give priority to patient-related topics for translation. We plan to add a module in each post that is easy for the audience to understand. To expand the influence of Cochrane evidence, we plan to add methodological articles and the latest hot research on the platform to attract broad attention.
We intend to conduct more vigorous publicity, and focus more on targeted audiences, sharing posts of possible interest with academic societies such as the Chinese Medical Association, China Association of Chinese Medicine, etc. Meanwhile, we will try to recruit senior doctors as celebrity ambassadors to disseminate Cochrane Review evidence by means of pushing articles in their various fields. In this way, evidence could reach specific audiences/patients directly.
Thanks to WeChat’s interacting functions, we can communicate with the audience by replying to comments and auditing their views. We will give prompt feedback to users to solve their queries.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: The dissemination of Cochrane evidence through WeChat Official Account helps the audience to assess medical knowledge, including health care and effective treatment. It facilitates patients' communication with their doctors and helps the audience to make evidence-based decisions.
