Anyone interested in social media and healthcare IT has most likely seen the hashtag #HIT100 floating around the Twittersphere within the past few days. Wondering what it means, and how to become involved?

You're not alone. To get insight on the basic ins and outs of the #HIT100 list, Healthcare IT News spoke to Michael Planchart, enterprise healthcare architect at Perficient, blogger at The EHR Guy and creator of #HIT100.

Planchart answered five questions about this year's #HIT100 list.

1. Tell us a little about the #HIT100 list. Essentially, what is it and how do people participate?

The #HIT100 list is a crowd-sourced nomination of the most influential individuals or organizations in the #HealthIT and #HITsm communities. People participate by nominating their fellow social media peers with a tweet: "I nominate @twitter_handle to the #HIT100 list. #HealthIT #HITsm".  It's this simple.

After the first nomination period (which, this year, is estimated to be approximately seven days for the first round or until the stream slows down to a few tweets a day) the nominations are counted for each individual or organization. Those that end up with the most nominations are placed at the top of the list.  The first list consists of 250 individuals and organizations.

The second round consists of nominating from the top 100 of the list the top #HIT5 peers. Some community members have expressed their concern of voting fatigue, and this year, we may just not go through the second round, and [instead] list the #HIT5 winners from the top of the first round's list.  Since this is crowd-sourced, I'll wait and see what everyone would like to do. The #HealthIT and #HITsm communities are very engaging, and they always give valuable feedback.

The #HIT100 rules are simple and can be read in this post.

[See also: Social media for healthcare providers: without it, 'you don't exist'.]
 
2. What is the goal of the #HIT100 list? Tell us how you came up with the idea and the purpose it serves.

The goal of the #HIT100 list is simple; it's the recognition of those [who] are contributing to the advancement of healthcare technology through social media. The ultimate goal is to show how much we care for improving the healthcare outcomes of patients, even if this is one tweet at a time.

The #HIT100 contest was birthed spontaneously during the Fourh of July weekend, 2011, while I was adventuring in the Olympic National Park in Washington state. The contest was kicked off with a simple tweet, and [was] later followed by a few more giving the basic rules of engagement.

I really had no big expectations since previously I had made other attempts at engaging folks to join networks, lists, etc. Most people initially would get excited, but then it would settle down to a total halt. #HIT100 was different. #HIT100 became the perfect summer storm.

I believe people identified themselves with #HIT100. They felt the need to belong to the group and to be recognized by their peers for their contributions to #HealthIT and #HITsm. It definitely filled a void.
 
3. This is the second year #HIT100 is taking place. What is different from last year, or what tweaks have you made to it?

Yes, indeed it is. I was initially concerned it may not have the same interest as last year, but actually, the participation has been almost tenfold (perception wise since we still don't have counts). The only different things are the rules on how nominations will be counted; [they're] a lot clearer this year.  Last year, I spent several weekends and many late nights trying to sort through the tweets, re-tweets and replies and applying heuristics to distinguish nominations from the chatter. For the sake of transparency, I wanted the final outcome to be as accurate as possible.

This year if the rules are not followed in the tweets, they will not be taken into account, but there will be some flexibility if the nominating tweets are crisp and clear.

[See also: 6 reasons physicians need to be on social media.]

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