PhD student just asked me which journals I read to stay up to date on health + tech. My answer: Twitter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
It was classic RT bait and indeed it was echoed dozens of times by fellow Twitter geeks — more than any other tweet I’ve written.\u00a0 But I would like to qualify it with a fuller explanation.\u00a0 I don’t just read Twitter and ignore journals.\u00a0 Far from it. <\/b>For me, Twitter is a filter, a suggestion box, an idea machine, and a window.<\/p>\n\n Here’s the story:<\/p>\n\n I received a familiar and welcome request via email last Thursday:<\/p>\n\n [a university]<\/p>\n I have downloaded a number of your articles from Pew Internet, as well as a couple of data-sets from Pew as well.<\/p> I am wondering if you have any advice (names of researchers; websites; reference lists of peer reviewed articles) that you may be able to share with me…<\/p> Thank you for your time and help. You should know that with all the articles you’ve already published online, you’ve already helped me significantly. So thank you.<\/p><\/div>\n\n I love getting emails like this and I try to respond as quickly and as helpfully as I can.\u00a0 I welcome the new ideas and approaches that come from students. I also believe in the principle of “be nice to everyone, they could be on your hiring committee some day.”<\/p>\n\n Here’s my response:<\/p>\n\n Thanks very much for your interest in my research.\u00a0 There is a lot to catch up on, but don’t worry, it also is changing so fast that nobody is fully up to date!<\/p> For a historical perspective, I recommend reading the E-Patients White Paper — downloadable from the e-patients.net blog (right sidebar).<\/p> You have probably already found the Pew Internet Health page, but in case you haven’t: https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/topics\/Health.aspx<\/a><\/p> You can select from a dropdown menu on that page to read only Reports, which might be a shortcut.<\/p> The best paper I’ve read recently, if you want to just fast-forward to today, is a book chapter on online health information: PDF<\/a><\/p> And if you’re not yet following me on Twitter:\u00a0 http:\/\/twitter.com\/SusannahFox<\/a><\/p> You’ll find a large and welcoming community there.\u00a0 Pay attention to hashtags like #hcsm and #health2con — follow the ones that interest you.\u00a0Honestly, Twitter is better than any peer-reviewed journal for staying up to date on tech & health.<\/p><\/div>\n\n But I realized that a newcomer would benefit from a longer explanation of Twitter’s possibilities. So here goes, a very subjective health+tech guide to Twitter:<\/p>\n\n Twitter as filter: <\/b>Because I get more value from what my colleagues recommend than any RSS mix I could put together.\n<\/b><\/p>\n\n @ahier<\/a> separates the wheat from the chaff, consistently pointing out the best information related to health and technology.<\/p>\n\n @KentBottles<\/a> – Just how much do I love Kent’s picks? I get up on Sunday mornings looking forward to seeing what he recommends from the New York Times<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n @pfanderson<\/a> has probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know about information technology and its intricate connection with health care. Plus she makes me feel like a welcome friend whenever I check in on her feed (although we’ve never met).<\/p>\n\n Twitter as suggestion box<\/b>:<\/p>\n\n @gfry<\/a> and @markhawker<\/a> are two of the health\/tech field’s toughest critics and when they tell me to refocus my lens, I do it.<\/p>\n\n @kevinclauson<\/a> brings two valuable perspectives — as an academic and as a pharmacist. I could never <\/i>hope to find the journal articles he highlights, but what I really appreciate are the collegial DMs he sends when I post something new.<\/p>\n\n @mindofandre<\/a> and @digiphile<\/a> completely get what I do and cc me on tweets highlighting articles they know I need to read.<\/p>\n\n Twitter as an idea machine<\/b> (and those ideas often are inspired by people outside my field):<\/p>\n\n @timoreilly<\/a> – Sure he’s an internet industry guy who is interested in health care, but it’s not his focus, so I count him as an outside influence. He’s a desert-island follow for me.<\/p>\n\n @stoweboyd<\/a> is a futurist who is responsible for at least a half-dozen a-ha moments for me since I started following him.<\/p>\n\n @zephoria<\/a> stuns me weekly with her insights. She’s another desert-island follow.<\/p>\n\n Twitter as a window<\/b>: Because I can’t be everywhere I’d like to be.<\/p>\n\n @epatientdave<\/a> is one of the most passionate, but on point, live-tweeters I know. Because of his enthusiastic review of a talk by @SeattleMamaDoc<\/a> I knew I had to watch the video <\/a>as soon as it was posted. It knocked my socks off.<\/p>\n\n @healthythinke<\/a>r is the person I’ll nominate to cover any event I can’t attend because her observations are so sharp, especially when she has time for a blog post like this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This list is by no means comprehensive.<\/b><\/p>\n\n I currently follow 591 Twitter accounts and a few public lists.\u00a0 I also created private lists to follow scientists, health reporters, and patient bloggers, among others. Twitter curates the full range of health-related reading suggestions, from the New England Journal of Medicine<\/i><\/a> to Mothers with Cancer<\/a> to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks<\/a><\/span>. It’s library + field work combined.<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/e-patients.net\/wp-includes\/js\/tinymce\/plugins\/wordpress\/img\/trans.gif\" "\\"More...\\""){kind=spacer}
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