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Healthcare IT professionals you should follow on Twitter

John Sharp — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:06:36 +0000

There are actually many people to follow in this category but I was privileged to be first on this list by MedCityNews last week. Also, it put me in some good company, most of whom I already follow, such as, @jhalamka and the infamous @histalk.

This made me think of writing a brief post about how I use Twitter. I was an early adopter of Twitter starting just before attending Medicine 2.0 in Toronto in 2007. Meeting an energetic group from the US and Europe who were live tweeting at the conference got me hooked.

Now I have 5500 followers from Europe to Australia and follow about 1100. I post 3-6 times per day and more often at conferences. My focus in tweeting is health IT, health care social media, mHealth and apps, innovation in healthcare, conferences I attend, articles I read (newsletters and journals) and some notable Cleveland Clinic news. I try to share quality information and almost always include links. I use my favorite hash tags #hcsm, #mhealth, #HIMSS, #EMR. Have not gotten into the habit of using #HealthIT or #HITsm yet.

I also promote some of my favorite people, such as, @berci, @healthythinker, @lucienengelen, @nicolaziady, @ReginaHolliday,@ahier and many others.

Overall, I try to provide quality information that I think is important and not get bogged down in criticizing others or off-color remarks.

I hope I can continue to earn the respect of the wild world of Twitterland. See you there.

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Book Review – Tweeting LINUX

John Sharp — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:24:13 +0000

This 300 page book offers a fun approach to what’s more than a reference book on LINUX command lines. Subtitled “140 Linux configuration commands explained in 140 characters or less”, the book provides an alphabetical approach to these commands. In addition to the 140 character summaries, each page provides screen shots and more detailed documentation on the commands. Included in the dictionary are some familiar commands like chmod (change or modify directory permissions) and more esoteric ones like testpharm (checks the smb.conf file for correctness).
So if you want a Linux reference that has a fun approach, pick up a copy.

Other books by Don R. Crawley include Linux administration and IT customer service.

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Social Media at HIMSS

John Sharp — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 02:36:15 +0000

Meet the Bloggers: Provider EditionI had the privilege to present three times at HIMSS11 on social media, twice at the social media center and twice on panels. My presentation at the social media center, Social Media in Health IT: Rapid Dissemination and Collaboration was brief but well received.

A Social Media Panel | Provider Edition: with David Kibbe and John Marzano was moderated by Rich Elmore was a great opportunity to interact and compare notes on social media and blogging. It was recorded -

The Meeting the Bloggers panel on Wednesday was well attended and worked well. The talented panel included
@ahier @cthielst @microsoftmd @dleyva08 .

We received a very positive review by iMedExchange titled “To Blog or Not to Blog.”

Thanks to Ceasar Torres and his team who did a great job at the HIMSS 11 Social Media Center. He even got his own interview

Overall, a great experience. Will post more about HIMSS in the next few days.

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Uses of Twitter for Hospitals and Physicians

John Sharp — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:55:00 +0000

In a post by Michael Lara, MD, he proposes several potential uses of Twitter for physicians most of which are quick updates on CME, medical news, etc. He also goes into great detail about how it should not be used in medical practice because of potential privacy violations and the need to respond to medical emergencies in other ways.
One comment I have is that physicians who practice in multiple sites could use it as a communication tool with their offices similar to how pagers have been used until now. One way to manage such accounts is to protect updates and only allow a limited number of colleagues or office staff to view updates.

Ed Bennett’s catalog of hospital use of social media continues to grow. This will encourage hospitals to have a standard list of social media tools to manage their brand and their message: Facebook page and/or group, YouTube channel, Twitter account as a minimum.

Finally, I posted slides of a recent presentation on social media. Keep fine tuning this for two more presentations coming up in April.

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Twitter for Healthcare

John Sharp — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:11:00 +0000

Phil Baumann has posted 140 uses of Twitter for healthcare. He does preface the list with challenges including privacy and the oath to do no harm. Yet his main point is the true potential for innovation using microblogging in healthcare.
It reminded me that my hospital has used text paging actively for years through the phone directory lookup, anyone can send a text page. But with the growing pervalence of smart phones, email and twitter are becoming more prevalent.

Two-way paging never caught on. The transition to smart phones has mostly meant a greater dependence on email. How to make the shift to Twitter’s possibilities in an organization that blocks YouTube and Facebook? As with blogs, the innovation will need to be outside of the official channels with individuals as champions on new technology by demonstrating its usefulness.

Perhaps I’m as optimistic as Phil. The outcome remains to be seen.

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Twitter in Healthcare

John Sharp — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:41:00 +0000

Twitter’s popularity continues to grow. My main use for Twitter is hearing and sharing the latest trends in Health 2.0. It began at the Medicine 2.0 Congress with several people actively twittering during the conference and afterward. Since then my blogging has suffered as my activity on Twitter has increased.

John Halamka has posted about his adoption of Twitter on The Health Care Blog. He concludes that:

“then I’ve met my goal of overcommunicating with all my stakeholders to ensure they understand my strategy, priorities, and important healthcare IT news of the day.”

I am not sure overcommunicating is an appropriate goal for me. Hoping for some efficiencies in the near future as a result of social network aggregators like FriendFeed improve and offer new features.

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Twittering for Public Health

John Sharp — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:42:00 +0000

Came across this slide show by Patricia Anderson of the University of Michigan, one of the first I’ve seen on the use of Twitter in Health Care. More health care organizations are joining Twitter as a communication tool including MD Anderson Cancer Center and the CDC. The real effectiveness of microblogging is yet to be demonstrated in any studies but like any tool in can have potential in this business sector. MD Anderson, which is in Houston, also used Twitter after the recent hurricane to notify the public of the status of the hospital.

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