(Joke: What is a topologist? A: Someone who cannot distinguish between a doughnut and a coffee cup.)
I have always had difficult explaining to people why, as a physician, I am interested in social media,
Here’s why.
People are becoming more and more entwined with the digital universe.
Whether it’s through TV, the Internet, their mobile phone, their social media, or their electronic health record (EHR), we are changing our personal landscape from a physical one to one which is also digital.
The topology of our digital landscape (defined here as the way in which these digital parts are interrelated and arranged) can overlap in a myriad of ways with something even more complex – our health.
It’s this intersection which I am interested in, and one element of this intersection is social media.
So, just and an oncologist needs to have an understanding of the different cancers, a digital health topologist needs to have an understanding of social media.