I have worked in a hospital the past eight years, and it is interesting to see how they are adapting new technologies into patient care.  Recently, President Obama pledged his support of increasing funding toward health care to move patient's medical records from paper to electronic.  He claims that a study in 2005 states the move will save 80 billion dollars.  However, there are some that dispute that claim.  I recently saw an interesting Blog written by Dr. Kevin Pho.  He claims that the cost to change the infrastructure of the current paper records may prevent the change.

Recently someone tweeted me an interesting Blog post by Kevin Maguire about the Hierarchy of Tweets in Twitterland.  For those who don't know, Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who developed a general structure of needs and motivations displayed by people based on importance.

Mr. Maguire uses the same structure and adapts it to the types of Tweets the general user will make or read.  It also discusses some characteristics of the general user that is applicable to the model Kevin adapted here.  I will briefly summarize what Mr. Maguire is saying and invite the reader to read his Blog.

We start at the bottom with the most important Tweets.  These Tweets discuss what the user is doing in the physical world.  The next level is Safety, which the user stays safe by having access to information via the Tweets of his or her followers.  "Staying connected" helps us stay safe.  The third level of Love/Belonging comes as people read your Tweets and reply to them.  It tells the reader that what he or she has to say or what they are doing is important, because someone took the time to respond to the Tweet.  The fourth level is Esteem.  This is where people's egos come in.  The beginning user finds esteem in how many followers he or she has.  But the more advanced user finds esteem in how many Retweets they have.  One of the great features of Twitter is the ability to have quick access to information and to be able to pass that information on to one's followers.  Self-actualization is the final level and realization of this comes when users realize they can help other users use Twitter better.  Passing along information about one's experience with Twitter and all the features available is extremely helpful to one just starting on Twitter.