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Posts tagged ‘twitter’

Apr 1

17 Comments

Being Productive Online: Time-Management Lifehacks

Recently, Ves Dimov at Clinical Cases and Images has come up with a great post on How to deal with the information overload from blogs, RSS and Twitter so I thought I would share my thoughts with you about time-management lifehacks.

The main concept is to centralize the flow of information into one or two sites. For me, these are GMail and Google Reader. It means I can control anything I’m interested in by visiting these places online.

How to keep up with Twitter?

I follow more than 1000 users and have more than 1500 followers, so I receive thousands of tweets every day. Here are a few things that save me time and effort.

  • I use Tweetdeck and created several groups on Tweetdeck that let me filter useful information (e.g. Health 2.0, genetics, bloggers groups, etc.).

tweetdeck

  • I check Friendfeed Best of the day because it will filter the best discussions for me (though not all of my Twitter contacts are on Friendfeed).

ff-best

  • Microplaza automatically filters the most interesting discussions and links mentioned in my Twitter community. I get the updates through RSS so it’s quite easy to see what I miss when I’m not online.

microplaza

How to follow the content you want to track?

  • Google Alerts helps me track the content that is published about me, my blog or my service online.

alerts

  • Twilerts and Tweetbeep do the same but via Twitter. Whenever a Twitterer mentions my name, blogs, favourite search terms, I will be notified via e-mail.

tweetbeep

How to write posts fast on your blog?

I often use the Quickpress function on WordPress that lets me write a post from the admin dashboard in just seconds. I always have  a huge backlog on Scienceroll so I created clearly defined directories in Firefox bookmarks and tag all the links I save there. It helps me organize the thousands of bookmarks I have and I always get a clear picture of what I should write about.

quickpress

As I’m working on different computers, Foxmarks synchronizes my bookmarks automatically.

foxmarks

How to work on Wikipedia?

As an administrator, I have some duties, so I built a long watchlist to keep track of the changes in the entries I’m interested in. I also use Huggle to fight vandalism. With Huggle, reverting hundreds of vandalisms and notify vandals on their talk pages take only minutes and a few clicks.

How to use RSS?

I created categories based on priorities in Google Reader. I always know which category of feeds to check depending on how much time I have and whether I’m looking for blog topics or just interesting pieces of information.

google-reader-categories

I also receive the updates of my favourite Youtube channels, Pubmed search terms and Del.icio.us tags.

And you may also find the slideshow from Joshua Schwimmer interesting

If you have more tips on how to be productive online, please let me know.

Jan 23

11 Comments

Quality of Medical Information Online: A Twitter Discussion

I had a nice discussion today with a few Twitterers including Jay Parkinson about the quality of online medical information. It started when I mentioned many great medical blogs are not accredited by HONcode, the Health On The Net Foundation, which is a non-profit organization with a mission to improve online health information quality. I try to summerize the keypoints of the discussion.

Pros:

healthdirectory

berci-quality

berci-quality2

abelphramboy

Trisha

Cons:

chilmark

dmitriy

jayparkinson

bydls

Then I found a publication, Indicators of Accuracy of Consumer Health Information on the Internet that states:

One hundred Web pages were identified and characterized as “more accurate” or “less accurate.” Three indicators correlated with accuracy: displaying the HONcode logo, having an organization domain, and displaying a copyright. Many proposed indicators taken from published guidelines did not correlate with accuracy (e.g., the author being identified and the author having medical credentials) or inaccuracy (e.g., lack of currency and advertising).

I believe patients seeking medical information online need guidance. Regarding tech blogs or art blogs, it doesn’t really matter who determines quality. But in the medical blogosphere, I think it’s crucial to have a neutral third party that works to assure quality and try to help patients how to find reliable content. So the conclusion is I’ll keep on promoting HONcode and will try to get all of my medical sites accredited (Scienceroll and Webicina are both accredited).

Further reading:

Jan 22

17 Comments

Twitter And Health 2.0: A Visual Story

The VizEdu team did an excellent job when they tried to visualize the connection between medicine and twitter. And they included my profile in the special slideshow which I really appreciate. Check this flash/show out. They’re also open to new suggestions so feel free to add new thoughts to the presentation.

twitter-health2-vizedu

Further reading:

Jan 20

9 Comments

Microblogging and Webicina.com

I’m a real fan of Twitter, a microblogging platform where users can post messages containing only 140 characters. Discussions become fast and accurate while sharing information is easier than ever. That’s why we implemented a microblogging platform-like box into the main page so now I can share announcements and news about Webicina even more efficiently.

Everytime you click on the main page, a new message will show up automatically.

webicina-microblog

Soon, we are going to come up with a free tool for physicians and we also have a big surprise for patients. Stay tuned! In 2009, we must get to people and help them understand why they need guidance in the medical field of web 2.0.

Webicina.com is my service that aims to help medical professionals and patients enter the web 2.0 era by providing e-courses, consulting and personalized packages.

I also made the list of available e-courses public:

Medicine in Second Life: Patient support sites, meetings and medical simulations in the virtual world:

  • What is Second Life? (FREE preview)
  • Step 1: How to enter the virtual world?
  • Step 2: How to move, search and create landmarks?
  • Step 3: Medicine and health in the virtual world
  • Step 4: How to organize a meeting or presentation in Second Life?
  • Step 5: How can patients use Second Life?
  • Step 6: Which health groups to join?

Medical Blogs, channels for building an online image:

  • Inside the medical blogosphere (FREE preview)
  • Step 1: How to start a new blog?
  • Step 2: How to write a post and how to tag it?
  • Step 3: Design, widgets, pictures and more
  • Step 4: How to launch a blog carnival?
  • Step 5: How to provide quality content?
  • Step 6: The future of blogging?

How to follow journals and sites: RSS feed and trend trackers

  • How to keep yourself up-to-date? (FREE preview)
  • Step 1: How to keep yourself up-to-date??
  • Step 2: What is RSS about?
  • Step 3: Aggregators I.
  • Step 4: Aggregators II.
  • Step 5: Aggregators III.
  • Step 6: How to follow a medical journal?
  • Step 7: What to do when a site does not have RSS?

Further reading:

Jan 19

17 Comments

Twitter: Live Surgery, Sugarstats and 100 ways for hospitals

There are too many interesting news and posts focusing on the potential benefits of Twitter in healthcare so I thought I would share these with you in a compilation.

  • The first live-tweeted surgery (Global Neighbourhoods): Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit performed the first live-tweeted surgery. Can you imagine how useful it can be in the future in medical education? (And the monitor on the image proves only Tweetdeck could make it possible.)

twitter-surgery

Photo courtesy of Henry Ford Health Services

sugarstats

Twitter users now carry on conversations (called “tweets”) with each other, share information learned at conferences and CME events, and query peers about professional concerns. Physician bloggers Ves Dimov, M.D., of Clinical Cases and Images (http://clinicalcases.blogspot.com/) and Kevin Pho, M.D., of Kevin, M.D. (www.kevinmd.com) use Twitter to communicate information rapidly without writing a traditional blog post. Others use Twitter to rapidly share information gathered at conferences that colleagues are unable to attend.

To sum it up, Twitter is extremely useful these days and it will be even more popular in the future. When we are talking about online reputation, we will not refer to blogs, but Twitter accounts. Join the discussions there.

Update: As Bob Coffield pointed out on Twitter, it wasn’t the first live surgery “broadcasted” via Twitter.

Jan 14

3 Comments

Twitter and Medical Education: Slideshow

Dr. Shock posted a more than interesting slideshow about the educational implications of Twitter created by Befitt who has already published other similar slideshows.

Further reading:

Jan 9

32 Comments

If you’re new to Twitter

A few days ago, I was happy to discover Jay Parkinson, the co-founder of Hello Health, on Twitter and I thought I should help Twitter users who are new to Twitter but would like to join all those interesting health discussions.

1. Find a reason to use Twitter

2. Check what you have to know about Twitter

3. Find valuable people to follow:

4. Make sure the people you follow are really valubale twitterers

5. Track your charts and work on to become a must-follow twitterer

6. Don’t miss a post at Twitip.com

7. Filter discussions by following numerous users but reading only the best discussions

8. Come up with ideas about how to implement Twitter into everyday’s healthcare or health management

9. Share your tips with us!

Jan 4

52 Comments

10 Tips: How to filter discussions on Twitter?

I follow more than 570 users on Twitter that leads to more than 100 new tweets an hour and I don’t have hours a day to check all the messages. Co-bloggers frequently ask me how I can follow all of them efficiently. Well, I have a few tips on this and feel free to share yours with us:

  • Tweetdeck: The best tool to organize your tweets. I created a Health 2.0 group to filter the tweets of the users who are writing about medicine or health 2.0.

tweetdeck

  • Twitter Search:  I always do a search for a few keywords to find new people twitting about my field of interest.

twitter-search

  • Twilert.com: It works like Google Alerts which means it lets you receive regular e-mail updates of tweets containing your keywords.

twilert

  • Filter by replies: It’s easy to discover ongoing discussions as people reply to each other so sometimes it’s enough to follow the buzz. Omnee helps you with it:

omnee1

  • Tweetree: It puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context.

tweetree

  • Tweetscan: You can get updates via e-mail, RSS and scan up to five phrases for daily or weekly delivery.

tweetscan1

  • Twitscoop: Insert a twitter username or keywords in the search box to track a conversation, topic or conference.

twitscoop

  • Power Twitter: A Firefox Add-on that integrates search, images and videos into you stream.

power-twitter

  • Friendfeed daily best: I subscribed to many of my Twitter followers on Friendfeed as well. So the Friendfeed daily best feature helps me filter the most valuable discussions.

ff-daily-best

  • FFholic.com: A collection of the most discussed, commented, liked, etc. Friendfeed messages.

ffholic

What are your tips?

Further reading:

Dec 22

1 Comment

Twitter Charts

Twitter, the microblogging service, is one of the most useful online tools these days. There is a whole community focusing on health 2.0 and medicine 2.0.

Now you can track your statistics as well. I use TweetStats for this purpose that shows my tweetcloud (words I use often):

twitter-word-cloud

And here is how often I twit…

twitter-stats1

Or you can try Twitter Charts:

twitter-charts

If you need more examples, check this out:

Dec 14

6 Comments

Medicine 2.0 Carnival #35: Twitterity

med320.jpg

Medicine 2.0 is a blog carnival aiming to analyze and describe the impact of web 2.0 on medicine and healthcare. We, bloggers, believe web 2.0 can change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered.

Let’s launch the carnival with articles on medical search.

Medical Search:

On Walter Jessen’s Highlight HEALTH 2.0 blog, Hope Leman had a guest post: Mednar Search … and Hope said, “It is good.“

AltSearchEngines reviewed the Health 2.0 Conference – Day 2.

Googling for Life Scientists – Patricia F. Anderson, Librarian (UBC Academic Search – Google Scholar Blog)

Twitter:

Top U.S. Hospitals Are On Twitter (Clinical Cases and Images)

Twitterview: The Future of Medicine in 140 Characters (Scienceroll)

Twitter a Healthcare Marketing Tool? Maybe. (Health Leaders Media)

Top 10 Twitter Apps (Read Write Web)

Construct your own ‘Top 10 Must Follow’ List as it relates to your own Niche (TwiTip): The link leads to the top 10 medical twitterers.

Omnee: An organic directory of Twitter users (Scienceroll)

omnee1

Telemedicine:

Telehealth and EMRs – How can Physicians Use these Tools? (Canadian EMR)

Convergence of Health 2.0 and medical home? (HealthBlawg)

OpenECGproject: Open Source for Electrocardiography (Scienceroll)

openecgproject

Blog:

10 blogging myths debunked from a medical blogger perspective (Clinical Cases and Images)

Work for Nature, Go to SciFoo (Nascent)

Health 2.0:

Video: Dr. Jay Parkinson’s presentation about HelloHealth (Clinical Cases and Images)

Top Physician Recommended Health Sites on the Web (Chris Pirillo)

The “Last Mile“ (The Last Mile of healthcare Consumerism)

Health 2.0: Are We On The Same Page? (Mark My Words)

From search to transactions: Americans move along the eHealth continuum (Health Populi)

The Doctor Will E-Mail You Now (Newsweek)

Health 2.0: Patients on Social Networks (BusinessWeek)

The New Examined Life (WSJ)

OrganizedWisdom Interview with Health 2.0 Conference Co-founder Indu Subaiya (Health 2.0)

Medicine and health 2.0:

The Bridge: Do you want to change healthcare? (Scienceroll)

United Health Jumps Into Consumer Fray (Chilmark Research)

Healthcare Goes Mobile:

healthcare-goes-mobile

Practice Fusion: a growing Electronic Medical Records community.

practice-fusion

If you want to host an issue of Medicine 2.0 in 2009, let me know (berci.mesko [at] gmail.com). Don’t forget to submit your articles (berci.mesko [at] gmail.com).

You can also follow me on Twitter or follow the room of Microcarnival room of Medicine 2.0 where all the posts are published.

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