Annual Reflections at the End of 2019

It has been customary for me to post an annual reflection at the of end of the year for this blog. The world of blogging, and my own blogging, have certainly changed over the years. This is probably due in part to social media reaching a level of maturity or, in the parlance of the Gartner Hype Cycle, the plateau of productivity. When I started this blog, blogging was relatively new. In parallel was the excitement of the HITECH Act, which certainly transformed the world of biomedical and health informatics.

But I still enjoy blogging, and appreciate the forum it provides me to speak to things of interest in informatics. This past year included one milestone, which was the blog passing the one-decade old milestone from the first posting on March 12, 2009. But my frequency of posting has gone down over the years. This is only my 15th post for 2019, down from a peak of 44 posts in 2013.

Still, 2019 was another excellent year, and I remain gratified to have a career I find rewarding. One number that has achieved relevance for me as the year ends is 2600. This number represents two things. One is the number of people who have completed the OHSU offering of the AMIA 10x10 course. The other is the number of people who follow me on Twitter. My gradual embrace of Twitter is noteworthy because I posted several years ago that I did not find much use for it. My social media use has generally settled into using Twitter for professional purposes and Facebook for mostly personal uses, although many of my Facebook friends are also professional colleagues, so there is overlap with professional activity there.

I also have much gratitude for all the other wonderful things in my life, including my family, my friends and colleagues, and my health. And as 2019 draws to a close, we now enter a new decade, the twenties. I could never imagined many of the things that happened, good and bad, in the 2010s, so it will be interesting to see how the twenties develop.