Milestones and Greatest Hits for the Informatics Professor Blog

In recent months, this blog has hit several numerical milestones. Over the summer, the blog surpassed 200,000 page views since its inception in January, 2009. The blog now has over 400 followers who regularly get updated about new postings, not to mention those who follow it via Twitter feeds (@OHSUInformatics and @williamhersh, and their numerous retweets), Facebook postings (myself and the various OHSU groups), and a number of sites that repost entries (HITECH Answers, Health Data Management, the American College of Physicians, and others). In addition, the blog recently surpassed 200 postings dating back to early 2009. I am not a "stream of consciousness" type of blogger, but instead only post when I believe I have something interesting and coherent to say.

Perhaps this is a time to reflect back and consider, what are this blog's "greatest hits?" Many of my postings have news pegs that lose longevity over time. But others I consider to be essays of more enduring value. Here is a list of those, which I might consider my all-time greatest hits (and not necessarily those with the most page views):

• Data standards and interoperability are essential and avoid the need to "unscramble eggs" (September 2014)
• Data analytics must prove its value beyond prediction and lead to improved health and care outcomes (August 2014)
• Fitting informatics training into the clinical fellowship model can be like fitting square pegs into round holes (May 2014)
• We need a research agenda and its funding for clinical informatics (March 2014)
• Data scientists must be research methodology scientists (July 2013)
• Statistics is a core competency for all citizens (May 2013)
• We need a universal data format and not a universal electronic health record (May 2013)
• Data entry is an under-discussed but key challenge (August 2012)
• The work of informatics is shifting from implementation to analytics (April 2012)
• Natural language processing is a dream that should still be pursued (March 2011)
• Current times have seen the importance of the informatics practitioner (November 2010)
• Informatics is a field of global truths across the world (February 2010)
• Informatics is not just for clinicians (October 2009)