data

That Went Well, #dayofdiabetes Edition

/ Christopher / Leave a comment

I’m incredibly proud of the turnout #dayofdiabetes garnered yesterday. There was a lot of a lot going on, but I think the net message was well communicated – this thing we do every day, managing this disease and staying alive, is not easy. And, the diabetes online community can be quite vocal when called to action.

I haven’t had an opportunity to dedicate enough time to look at all of the metrics, but here’s what I can share after a quick glance at some Symplur data…

  1. You all showed up. Big time. 2,248 tweets from 362 users. For reference, last year’s group #dayofdiabetes effort (April 10, 2014) generated 1,495 tweets from 275 users.
  2. Compared to last year, total impressions more than doubled. From 2,600,626 in 2014 to 5,349,262 yesterday.
  3. It should be noted that total #dayofdiabetes data received a significant bump from the #dsma chat that took place last night, thank you Cherise.

What I want to look at, for my own curiosity, and in anticipation of my upcoming AADE presentation is the overall makeup of the participants in both yesterday’s and last year’s #dayofdiabetes. How many patients shared their day? How many health care professionals engaged with and encouraged their peers to follow along? How many brands promoted the hashtag? How many brands abused the moment to promote something?

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Here’s a Thing I Wrote for Symplur

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This one looks at how different patient communities approach the new year, to what extent goals and resolutions are shared, and what makes for an open conversation among these communities.

Here’s a snippet.

While the how much question is worth considering as you engage this data, I think it’s equally important to look at the how. How were these communities prompted to engage with the topic of goals and resolutions? How well did those prompts foster a conversation among their respective communities? How might we evaluate the different approaches to this topic and find the optimal way to encourage goal setting and sharing?

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Patient Community Advocate at Symplur

/ Christopher / 2 Comments

Today marks my first official day as Patient Community Advocate at Symplur. This means I get to look at all kinds of data collected by Symplur’s extensive tools and figure out ways to bring the patient communities into these data-based conversations. This means I get to venture out into the scary world of freelancing with a mighty first step. This means I get to take on new projects that could help impact and shape the future of online disease communities. This means I have a chance to truly contribute to something – to one day look back and say “I built that”.

It also means I get to write blog posts using data provided by their reporting tool, Symplur Signals, like this one about World Diabetes Day and the #wddchat14 hashtag. And I get to create fun animated gifs like this one

Created by me, via symplur.com (linked)

Created by me, via symplur.com (linked)

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Improper Reliance

/ Christopher / 1 Comment

I’m preparing for my endocrinologist appointment in a few days and have started to download/upload/analyze data from my various diabetes devices. While I might not be able to make the most sense out of what all these numbers will mean, it will help focus some of the questions I will bring into the appointment and some of the objectives I hope to accomplish by the time the appointment is over.

I want to have a solid gameplan for how to approach my diabetes care in 2015. I need some back-and-forth to go along with the material supplied by ‘Pumping Insulin‘. I know the results of this data download and accompanying blood tests will not be stellar, but I know I have the ability to put everything in order and figure this diabetes thing out.

But when I look at the averages from my blood glucose meter, I worry. The 30 and 60 day averages indicate 2 blood glucose tests per day. Yikes. What happened to 6-10 times per day? It looks like I’ve been relying on my CGM for far more than the occasional corrective action. The FDA, and my doctors, say the blood glucose meter result is the be-all, end-all number that informs diabetes management – I haven’t been following those instructions.

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I Wrote About #dayofdiabetes for Symplur

/ Christopher / 1 Comment

While I continue to update http://dayofdiabetes.tumblr.com with new entries from last week, I invite you to hop on over to Symplur to read a guest post I wrote about the social metrics to come out of last Thursday. They provided me with some very cool graphics, like the one below, and some insightful numbers that helped prop up some of my analysis of what happened.

Image links to guest post on Symplur

Here’s a snippet:

My hope is that of those 2.5 million impressions, at least one of them helped someone new find the motivation to improve their own diabetes management. I hope that at least one of those impressions turned a Twitter lurker, to a thought-leader within the diabetes community. I hope that at least one of those impressions helped someone with a loved one living with diabetes understand what we go through on a daily basis a little bit better.

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A Question of Connectivity

/ Christopher / Leave a comment

Over the weekend Dayle and I watched the epic hockey matchup between the United States and Russia from Sochi. Being on the west coast, and lacking most of the other NBC-based channels that are showing the winter games, our options for Olympic consumption is quite limited.

I’m sure some of you are saying “but Chris, you can watch everything online at nbcolympics.com”. And you’re right, person talking to their computer monitor, but did you know you have to verify your television service before accessing more than 30 minutes of footage? This is perfect for cord cutters because…no, wait, it isn’t perfect. Thankfully my parents have been generous with their FiOS account, allowing access to HBO Go and now full replays of Olympic events. It’s a crappy workaround, but at least it works.

The happy ending to all of this, besides the final score of the game is that we were able to watch all of this on our television thanks to some nifty connectivity between my MacBook Air and an Apple TV. Now I know making fun of Apple for one reason or another is still a thing people do, but in this case I can’t complain. It simply works. And it’s great.

I’m not sure if there’s a diabetes tie-in to this, but I’m sure I could string out some kind of connection to device connectivity and data interoperability if I really tried. Luckily, I won’t bore you with that drawn out attempt.

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