Visualizing a medical Twitter hashtag: MD_Chat June 1, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Visualization, Web 2.0.add a comment
I’ve recently got in touch with an amazing group, the Thesys Group. They invited me to their HQ to show me what kind of projects they are working on and we started a bit of brainstorming about what we could come up with together.
In our first project, the Thesys Group analyzed the network of discussions focusing on one of the most popular medical Twitter hashtags, MD_chat. In the figure below, a dot represents a Twitter user, lines connecting the dots represent their relationship. The bigger the dot is, the more tweets the Twitter user had. The thicker the line is, the more tweets the two users had with each other. Based on this, here is the network graph (click on the image below to access the interactive graph):
Dots in the middle account for active users, while dots in the periphery did not participate that often in these discussions. Graph includes only tweets including user names, therefore representing discussions. Here is a zoomed version of this graph just to show you how the dots are connected to each other on a smaller scale with @doctor_v and @jodyms in the focus.
A few numbers and facts:
- Tweets are dated between October, 2010 and October, 2011 (4815 messages).
- Data tables were obtained from a public Scridb database containing all the MD_chat discussions and can be downloaded in doc or PDF formats.
- 282 users are represented in the graph with 1972 connecting them to each other.
- Graph was visualized with the Gephi open-source platform.
The top 10 most active Twitter user using the MD_chat hashtag in discussions (largest dots in the graph):
| Rank | MD chat user name | Number of addressed tweets |
| 1 | richmonddoc | 559 |
| 2 | ellenrichter | 204 |
| 3 | gailzahtz | 190 |
| 4 | peds_id_doc | 181 |
| 5 | mdstudent31 | 178 |
| 6 | apjonas | 159 |
| 7 | ability4life | 155 |
| 8 | westr | 145 |
| 9 | chukwumaonyeije | 140 |
| 10 | md_chat | 139 |
The aim of this short study was to point out the importance of medicine related hashtags and the growing popularity of these. The dynamic growth of MD_chat is a good example for the changes that we can see now in the everyday communication among peers. Therapeutic experience, news and opinions spread without geographical or linguistic limitations.
Please let us know what you think of this analysis and feel free to contact me or the Thesys Group for more details.
Like this:
Visualizing Disease Data December 2, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Visualization.1 comment so far
It’s quite clear not everyone would like to read long medical reports and text as sometimes a well-designed and structured graph can say more than a hundred words. Do you remember the Wired article about the blood test makeover that described how our blood test results would be designed to show more easily understandable information to patients?
Well, this Venn diagram shows many things about Hemorrhoids and related symptoms. And it’s not even a new infographics published on a blog but is from an old textbook which means the concept has been there for a long time but it always disappears in medicine.
Saving Medicare is Visualized June 4, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Healthcare, Video, Visualization.1 comment so far
It seems everyone in the US has a plan for saving Medicare, but this budget visualization looks really great.
This video lays out the clear choice United States of America faces on Medicare: “Will Medicare become a program in which a board of bureaucrats manages its bankruptcy by denying care to seniors?
Minimal Style Posters about Mental Disorders April 18, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Visualization.2 comments
Patrick Smith did some research about mental disorders and decided to try to visualize these conditions through minimal style posters. Amazing job! Here is one example:
200 Healthcare Systems in 4 Minutes December 7, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Data, Healthcare, Video, Visualization.1 comment so far
Hans Rosling, director of the Gapminder Foundation, just released another spectacular video featuring 200 years of 200 healthcare system with 12,000 numbers in 4 minutes. Enjoy:
Biological Cinema November 24, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Art, science, Video, Visualization.add a comment
New York Times published an article about molecular animators, scientists who can visualize the microscopic segments of life in a professional way.
If there is a Steven Spielberg of molecular animation, it is probably Drew Berry, a cell biologist who works for the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. Mr. Berry’s work is revered for artistry and accuracy within the small community of molecular animators, and has also been shown in museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2008, his animations formed the backdrop for a night of music and science at the Guggenheim Museum called “Genes and Jazz.”
“Scientists have always done pictures to explain their ideas, but now we’re discovering the molecular world and able to express and show what it’s like down there,” Mr. Berry said. “Our understanding is just exploding.”
Future of Screen Technology: Video September 29, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Video, Visualization.2 comments
I can’t wait to live in this world. I really want to scroll news in the mirror while brushing my teeth.
And in case you haven’t seen the Microsoft’s Vision of the Future (Parody):
A Periodic Table of Google Elements September 10, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Google, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Medicine 2.0 Course, Video, Visualization.4 comments
The new semester of my Internet in Medicine university elective course for medical students is coming soon, so I’ve already started looking for new materials and updates about the topics I cover. There is a presentation about Google in the 9th week and I just found this periodic table of Google elements. So far, I’ve been using the periodic table of collaboration.
Chart the Evidence Instead of Peer-Review September 9, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical journalism, Medicine 2.0, science, Visualization, Web 2.0.4 comments
Alex O Holcombe and Hal Pashler, co-developers of Chart the Evidence, believe instead of peer-review, we should create evidence charts just like that:
This free site leads students to glean evidence from the research literature, articulate theories, and consider whether each piece of evidence supports or undermines each theory.
See a toy example chart or read about evidence-charting in our blog.
Working scientists find the site useful for quickly creating a compact representation of the evidence for and against competing hypotheses.
I have to admit, it’s not a bad idea. I’m sure the majority of scientists is sick of peer-review, partly because it’s anonimous in most cases, and also because it doesn’t always help improve the manuscript. But the research communities would clearly benefit from such evidence charts. I’m curious to see what the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals have to say on this.
Real-time visualization of Wikipedia edits September 9, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine 2.0 Course, Video, Visualization, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.add a comment
In the Internet in Medicine electice course for medical students, I always mention how Wikipedia works in real-time in the Wikipedia lecture. I also show a video to them about the London bombings and how the related entry changed from second to second:
Well, this semester I will show them something even better, the real-time visualization of Wikipedia edits:
