At an event held in London last week Hotwire PR opened up its Digital Trends Report to the industry. The sixth annual event looked at the newest areas of digital integration; social media and politics, wearable technologies and data value.

A Hotwire spokesperson revealed 70% of MPs use Twitter and argued that social media could improve poll turn-out, but admitted that it is unlikely to actually change the way that people vote. MP Andrew Miller spoke about the huge part that social media had to play in Scotland’s ‘YES’ campaign, but he added, “The issues around privacy are getting extremely complicated”. MPs, and social media users in general, sacrifice their “right to be forgotten”. However, Miller commented that this storing of information is not necessarily a bad thing for democracy he said, “Historically, the value of information to the world we live in is very valuable”.

The next speakers; Tommy Parker, digital innovation lead at Ki Performance and surgeon, Dr Ralph Rogers, spoke about digital’s potential in the healthcare sector. They said that it would ultimately be cost-effective since it would allow for more people to be treated at home.

The final speaker was Andrew Jordan, SVP international operations and technology at NBCUniversal. He spoke about the way that millennials consume information, he said that it would become more important to tailor content to this demographic as they become the major consumer group.In general the public has more control over the kind of content they consume, they can choose when, where and what in a way that wasn’t previously possible.