I see a lot of dogs out in public these days. They're everywhere. People bring them to Home Depot, into Starbucks. Sometimes they're peeking out of purses. I love dogs, I'd even go so far as to say I consider most dogs excellent judges of character, but I'm not wild about sharing my coffee and oatmeal at Starbucks with somebody's dog right next to me.
When I go to the grocery store, I don't want to see a dog riding in the basket of the grocery cart. I went to the dentist the other day, guess who's hanging out by the reception desk? You got it, a big black Lab, named Elliot, by the way, which I consider to be a decidedly undogly name. The look in his eyes said, "I'm begging you, call me Fetcher."
I want some boundaries, is my point. Just give me a shopping experience without dogs.
Same goes for ubiquitous talk about social media. More specifically, Twitter. I really don't care that Anderson Cooper of CNN on-air wants to tell me he'll be tweeting during the broadcast. (I especially don't like the word tweeting while we're coming clean with each other.) Also, I don't need software I use in my healthcare IT business to update Twitter with what I'm doing, as a contract management tool I have is dying to do for me. Just sent a contract out! Third one today!
I don't say this thinking trade secrets could be disclosed. It's much simpler: I'm just not that interesting. And now that we have these two things on the table (too many dogs in public; I'm largely boring) I need to cover one more thing. I don't find Twitter interesting or helpful for healthcare except, I'm sad to say, in a catastrophe such as an earthquake or tornado where we actually learn things we couldn't know otherwise.
When tornadoes strike, or a tsunami hits, Twitter can be indispensable. It can become a strikingly important tool for healthcare, if only to inform others where help is needed. When we least expect it, a hula hoop becomes a vital messaging tool.
Otherwise, it's the dog in Starbucks, the thing I can't escape that I actually don't dislike, but I want to pick and choose my interaction with it. And just because there's a tool that lets us share 140 characters of text with the world doesn't mean it's valuable. In the real world of healthcare, when things are not catastrophic, I'm arguing that Twitter is rarely helpful.
I have a very high professional focus on Healthcare IT. So I typed in "healthcare IT" from the main Twitter screen. This popped up: We r letting d Tfare issue overshadow d aim of the damn lunch.It was a forum where issues of light,good healthcare/education were discussed. Besides the fact that I find the phrase "damn lunch" funny, I have no idea what the post means, but I'll bet a quarter it's right at 140 characters. I'm also pretty sure there is no such thing as light, good healthcare, and I'm positive that you should be able to find "healthcare IT" in context when using an ever present tool for social media.
So I put to you a simple question. Outside of emergencies or catastrophes, when does Twitter actually benefit healthcare? Who is helped, and how? I'm wide open to learning something here, but please answer in 140 characters or less. I'll be back in touch after I take my dog to church then out for a damn lunch.
NOTE: A slightly different version of this piece originally appeared in the June 8, 2011 edition of HIStalk. View it . The difference? I said in June 2011 that teenagers don't like Twitter, and then my two teenagers proved to me that I had no idea what I was talking about.