When it comes to judging an event’s success, it’s almost impossible to argue with the numbers. So by just about any standard, the 2012 mHealth Summit was a smash.

According to show director Rich Scarfo, the summit, which took place Dec. 3-5 at Washington, D.C.’s Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, attracted 4,055 registrants, “a significant increase over last year’s 3,250. They represented all 50 states (a first) and an additional 55 countries.”

But in this digital age, counting people isn’t the only way to determine success; tweets count, too. And in that respect, the mHealth Summit scored, with nearly 9,000 total tweets sent, a 40 percent increase over last year on the first day alone, 1,600 participants live-tweeting and an average of 120 tweets per hour.

As Scarfo put it, “Twitter exploded to three days of the event so the dialogue outside the event was alive and very content-driven – not commercially driven.”

When it comes to the specific attractions, Scarfo said, the most popular sessions were the consumer empowerment and engagement sessions, the privacy and security sessions and the research and policy sessions.

In the Exhibit Hall, Start-Up Health co-founder and CEO Steve Krein dubbed the conference “terrific.”

He said the 24 enterprises that constituted the Start-Up Health pavilion saw solid traffic from “an increasingly sophisticated audience,” and that “the response was great.”

He said the pavilion was a great opportunity for start-ups who couldn’t afford their own booth, and that those who participated “each represented a different aspect of the mobile sector.” He then predicted that the pavilion would be even bigger next year.

Scarfo concurred, with a list of things he’d like to add for next year. That includes an Innovation Pavilion for new-to-market companies, more virtual components, a full venture capital day with a variety of events and partners, an expanded, day-long Health 2.0 pre-conference session and, to get the word out across an even broader landscape, an “expanded media pavilion with more partners, more social networking (and) exhibitor amenities like on-the-spot video news releases and live streaming.”

In the Exhibit Hall, Steve Brausen of 1-Call, a division of Amtelco, predicted that next year’s show will be 25 percent bigger – in large part, he said, because between now and then the mHealth industry is bound to grow and change.