The #HIT100 has come to a close with plenty of controversy and discussion about the details of “the list.” In fact, there are two lists you can enjoy perusing. I’ll leave the controversy for someone else. As I mentioned when I hosted the #HIT99 last year, I’m not that interested in the ranking on the list. With just my own health IT Twitter accounts I could get someone in the top 75 (it was top 50 last year, so that’s an improvement as far as involvement) and so it’s easy to see how the system can be easily gamed. Such is life with any crowd sourced list. I’ll leave that to the data experts.
Instead, I find the most valuable parts of the #HIT100 in the nominating process itself and in the social discovery of everyone that’s nominated.
When it comes to the nominating process, it’s amazing to share and be shown gratitude. I believe in the power of gratitude and the #HIT100 is a great time to express appreciation to so many of the people on healthcare social media that have affected your life. Given the state of society, a little gratitude and recognition is a really beautiful thing. We need more of that, not less of it. I’m glad that most people enjoy the gratitude and don’t get lost in the competitive aspects of it.
As far as social discovery, I probably know or have seen most of the people in the top 100 of the #HIT100. Seeing them on the list is nice, but it doesn’t do much for me if I already know them and interact with them on a regular basis. That’s why I like to look beyond the Top 100 so I can discover new accounts I probably had never seen before.
For example, I like to look at the people who only got one #HIT100 nomination. There were 606 by my count and a bunch of them I’d never seen before. Some of these extraordinary accounts like @halletecco, @heatherhaugen, @histalk, @hospitalEHR, @healthITPR, @janoldenburg, @jenwebs, @jimmyweeks, @missykras, @naveen101, @pjmachado, @rrowleymd, @thedocsmitty, @thegr8chalupa, @davisjamie77, @davidblumenthal, @anthony_guerra, @annezieger, and @aneeshchopra all only got 1 vote and I’m sure that many of my readers don’t know them, but should. There are a lot more like them that can be discovered in the full list of people that were nominated to the #HIT100 (by my numbers it’s 921 people nominated total).
Since I find such value in the new account discovery that can happen by looking at anyone that’s been nominated to the #HIT100 or anyone that’s nominated someone to the #HIT100, I took @shimecode’s data and created this spreadsheet of everyone that was nominated and everyone that nominated someone else. There are a lot of incredible Twitter accounts throughout the list that are worth adding to your followers.
As has been noted by many people, there are a lot of people that impact healthcare and health IT that aren’t on social media or Twitter. That’s true and it’s ok. The #HIT100 is about those that are on social media. We could start a whole other list of people who aren’t on social media, but that would be a different list. In fact, maybe we should start a list of people we wish were on Twitter that aren’t. That would be fascinating.
All in all, I know that @theehrguy and @shimcode put a lot of work into processing the data for #HIT100. Which list is right and which list is wrong? The more I’ve thought about it, the more I don’t care. I’ll stick to enjoying the gratitude and social discovery that still exists in the #HIT100. Now, time to go through the list and see who else I should start following.
I agree with you John that – in the big picture – ‘ranking’ needs to be taken with a grain of salt. At the same time, rank certainly has its privileges; witness the special media/treatment the top 10 and Top 11-25 received.
And as far as I’m concerned, the idea of a “right list” or “wrong list” is not the point. But rather rules that changed as the HIT100 event progressed and a near complete lack of transparency as to the actual counts used to rank those making the “official” rankings promoted by @TheEHRGuy via several posts on @HealthCareITNews.
I got a lot of grief for questioning the process and calling out some specific BS that went on. And some tweets, a blog post and several comments made about the entire HIT100 event and event history that were entirely or, in some cases, partially untrue or inaccurate at best.
Instead of addressing those untruths and misguiding statements, I channeled my energy into using a survey to collect details to share about those that didn’t make the Top 100 of the HIT100: specifics about how and where their social media presence. In fact, many of the extraordinary accounts/people John Lynn mentions in this post responded to my survey. I’ll be sharing the results of that collection effort soon.
Survey: http://www.shimcode.com/2016/07/invert-hit100-list-help-me-turn-health.html
Looking forward to seeing your survey results. Something deeper than the #HIT100 would be a lot of fun as well. I wonder how we could make it go even deeper and really create a stronger community and/or discover new and interesting people.