Like everybody else I struggle with information overload.  It seems I just can’t keep up with what’s important.Too much information and too little time.And way too much noise.Yet I find myself drawn to Twitter, potentially the greatest source of health and medical noise imaginable.

How could that be?

As it turns out, Twitter has the capacity to serve as a remarkable filter for stuff in the infosphere.And you can tune that filter based on who’s feed you choose to follow.

I empower a group of individuals to decide for me what’s worth hearing about. I select people in my ‘areas of influence (medicine, pediatrics, parenting, writing, social media)’. And I entrust these individuals to bring me helpful links, information and commentary when they find it. While they may also bring me information about their elimination patterns, I figure that only helps me to understand them better.

Perhaps more importantly, as I learn what my network likes I’m better able to feed them what they need.

I stumbled across this figure from SM genius David Armano which sums up how I’ve grown to view Twitter.  I choose who to listen to, they keep their ears open to the noise of the infosphere, and they feed me what I need. Simple really.

For physicians or any busy professional, you can tune your feed for what you need.Be it research or the goings on of your state medical society, you can make of it what you wish.

I’ll add that the ‘I follow you, you follow me’ gimmick corrupts the idea of a functional human filter.  Just as we’re judged by the company we keep, the value of the information we’re fed is determined by who we follow and the human filter we create.

Image via David Armano’s Visual Thinking Archive