Bringing an EU Joint Action to TikTok: the case of eCAN

ISSUE: The Joint Action (JA) on strengthening eHealth including telemedicine and remote monitoring for health care systems for cancer prevention and care (eCAN) is a project co-funded by the European Union from 2022 to 2024. The Work Package on Communication (WP2) disseminates the JA's activities and outputs. Social media (SM) is one of the pillars of the communication strategy to promote eCAN and engage target audiences. Although the health sector is often present on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, there are few examples of TikTok use in this area, making it difficult to identify role models. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM: After reviewing other JA's communication channels, eCAN opens six SM accounts and divides them into two groups: written-content focused (Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter) and audiovisual-content focused (Instagram, YouTube & TikTok). The TikTok account aims at innovating the way EU initiatives communicate and disseminate results. At the same time, it is meant to try to achieve a broader scope of audiences by exploring original means to reach them. RESULTS: Main results of eCAN's TikTok account for the period mid-January to mid-April 2023*: Followers: 18; Likes: 181; Comments: 1; Nº of posts: 10; Views: 3.355 * Data to be updated with results up to mid-October at the conference. LESSONS: WP2 faces the barrier of reducing the gap existing in bringing healthcare literacy and scientific accuracy into the much less rigid format TikTok is, particularly regarding cancer and telemedicine outreach. Besides, this social network's rules and algorithms might be challenging in terms of achieving visibility. The success of dissemination strategy depends on an adequate planification of what contents need to be communicated altogether with what the best formats should be used to widen the audiences while maintaining the project's reliability. KEY MESSAGES: • The eCAN JA is the first initiative to incorporate TikTok as a platform for disseminating the projects updates, outcomes and issues related to telemedicine, cancer and digital transformation. • This project explores new tools to be used in the health sector and within EU initiatives for reducing the gap in bringing health literacy and scientific accuracy to broader audiences.