1.5 years of OpenClinTech
Family Trip to Smokey Mountains I snapped on my Sony a74
As 2024 comes to a close, I'm reflecting on the progress I've made in launching OpenClinTech back in July 2023. It was my personal initiative to create educational content at the intersection of healthcare and technology that was easily accessible (e.g. free) in hopes that we'll find more innovative solutions to our healthcare problems today. It was also a continuation of my 2022 goal during the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program to create the content that I wish I had when I was a student. To be honest, the momentum has been slower than I'd like as I've only barely scratched the surface of what I had hoped to achieve in my 2023 planning. Nonetheless, I'm still proud of my deliverables thus far and excited for the opportunity to continue learning, building, and connecting with my community.
In this blog, I'd like to share some of the things that are top of mind for me as I contemplate future content for OpenClinTech. If you haven't already, be sure to check out OpenClinTech (https://www.openclintech.com/learn) and my YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@briankfung) for educational content about FHIR, artificial intelligence, informatics, and coding. It's all free :)
An objective analysis
Reflections are often sentimental and subjective for me, so I figured I'd start off the process with more an objective perspective: my actual analytics. By the numbers, here's how 2024 looked:
YouTube analytics
YouTube Analytics Jan 1, 2024 - Dec 14, 2024
By the numbers, impact on YouTube has certainly gone down when compared to 2023. It's not surprising as I've been struggling with the motivation and time to consistently produce video content, but it's also a bit disappointing. It's actually been this way ever since I completed the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program in 2022. Upon reflecting on this recently, I'm starting to think that the time I used to spend creating videos has largely been replaced with the time I spend learning and developing software. My hope is that this will reverse a bit in 2025 and I can refocus and prioritize creating educational videos again as I think it's one of the most valuable things I can do towards OpenClinTech.
LinkedIn analytics
Last 365 days of LinkedIn Analytics
Switching to LinkedIn, I think I've been doing better relative to YouTube and certainly growing in a more optimistic manner. Since the vast majority of my posts are educational, I'm pretty happy to see some positive numbers that may be adding value to someone's educational journey. At least that's what I tell myself lol.
The Biomedical Informatics Bytes newsletter hasn't grown as much relative to 2023, but I'm pretty content with the growth thus far as the feedback has been largely positive.
I think my 2024 analytics underpins that as well given that two of the top posts came from a newsletter article. Further, I think these three posts tell me that I should continue creating content that relates to professional development - especially AI and FHIR.
Thinkific analytics
Deliverables I made towards OpenClinTech on Thinkific in 2024 came in the form of two courses that I'm quite happy with: 1) Crash Course on the Basics of Artificial Intelligence and 2) Building Simple Web Apps in Healthcare. Happy because I poured a lot (>40 hours over a few weekends) curating the content for the courses to ensure it was high quality, but also because they're both free and accessible to anyone that has an internet connection. Unfortunately, I think I'm rather disappointed in the number of individuals (n=163) that were impacted and it's something to reflect on more deeply. It makes me wonder if the focus should shift back towards YouTube and LinkedIn.
Analytics since July 2023
A subjective analysis
The biggest motivator for me in continuing on this journey is easily the intangible feedback I get from the community. It's hard to express my gratitude for the amount of support I receive, either publicly or privately, and I am sincerely grateful for you all. To highlight just a few that have come to mind:
And of course, my Grandma - as my consistent motivation to keep going.
From the subjective vantage point, it's usually an easy justification to keep trekking along.
Concluding thoughts
As 2024 comes to a close, I'll surely be reflecting on what I should be prioritizing next for 2025. Especially since I'll be embarking on the second longest vacation (18 days) I've ever taken in my life as I venture to the bay area, Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kawaguchiko) and Taiwan (Taipei) in just a week from today! The longest was 2015 when I backpacked all over Europe (19 days). With that said, THANK YOU to everyone that has been supporting me over the years and with my new OpenClinTech project. You're the real MVP.