This word cloud documents the prevalence of terms within the titles of more than 400 podium presentations and panels at this year's AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, June 24-26, 2012 in Orlando, Fla.
AcademyHealth is the country's largest organization of health services and health policy researchers who study the the organization, delivery, management and financing of U.S. health care. The annual 3-day research meeting is the organization's largest gathering
and includes a broad array of reports and panel discussions focused on the latest research on health care cost, quality and access.
A word cloud or "tag cloud," is a visual expression of a weighted list of terms that appear in a given document or compliation of documents, in this case, the titles of all presentations and panels at the meeting. The word cloud format has been popularized by search engines and social media sites that use it for key word displays relevant to the content.
But are these weighted lists useful for anything beyond creating graphically interesting displays or content indexes?
That's a question each of us has to answer. For instance, in the AcademyHealth word cloud above, does it mean anything that "Quality," "Care" and "Medicare" are so big but "Costs," "Affordable" and "Coordination" are so small? Or that "innovation" doesn't appear at all? What's your interpretation of this word cloud? Comment below.
