#HIMSS14: #HITsm-ers Share the History Behind Their Twitter Handles

We’ve been caught up in the #HIMSSanity this week! We were fortunate enough to grab a few minutes with some of HealthIT’s savviest social media influencers at #HIMSS14 in Orlando to ask them a couple of questions we’re all dying to know. You may know @HealthyThinker, @WareFLO, @MandiBPro, @OchoTex and @DocWeighsIn from their Twitter bios, but now you can put a face with the handle.

Q: How Did You Get Your Twitter Name?

Mandi Bishop: @MandiBPro: It’s to distinguish between my personal account and my professional account. Twitter started as an experiment for me. I knew I wanted to found my own consulting company and break away from being a traditional corporate schmo so I decided I needed to branch out my network. My network was very well established locally and I wanted to become more engaged on a national level. I thought Twitter seemed like an interesting way to do it. So in July of 2012, I created two Twitter accounts. I happened to follow Brian Ahier and I began interacting daily with him and his peers. He is the reason I am here. So he launched my Twitter career.

Chad Johnson: @OchoTex: There was a football player named Chad Johnson—so obviously Chad Johnson wasn’t available. He had a nickname “Ochocinco” and I’m from Texas so I said OchoTex—so it’s as simple as that.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn: @HealthyThinker: My consulting company has been called Think Health LLC. for 15 years or so. THINK is an acronym for technology, health, information, networks and knowledge so there actually is meaning. I took Think Health and thought I would be HealthyThinker.

Charles Webster, MD: @wareFLO: I have 4 degrees: accounting, industrial engineering, artificial intelligence in medicine, and I’m all but dissertationed in computational linguistics. In linguistics you have something called a “portmanteau”— a portmanteau is a word made up of two different words smushed together. So ware and flow is my Twitter handle. I also want to say that “ware” is a pun on “wear”—I am very interested in wearable technology like this Google Glass that I am wearing.

Pat Salber, MD, MBA: @DocWeighsIn: I’ve had a blog since 2005 called the “Doctor Weighs In” and I decided I needed to have a twitter handle and it was too long so I shortened it.

Stay tuned for more footage of #HIMSS14’s social media influencers in the coming weeks!