Editor’s Note: Jey Balachandran is a software engineer at Doximity.
For some time, we’ve been playing around with different kinds of data visualizations designed to help Doximity members learn more about how their peers are interacting with each other. To wit, this week, we’re sharing a tool we’ve put together that we think does that job especially well.
Sample size: Over 600,000 physician colleague connections made through Doximity.
Top 5 Most Connected:
- Internist
- Family Medicine
- Psychiatrist
- Ob / Gyn
- Pediatrician
Top 5 Least Connected:
- Radiation Oncology
- Infectious Disease
- Thoracic Surgeon
- Endocrinology
- Rheumatology
The graphic you see above represents the typical number of connections made for and between an array of medical specialties, each component circle sized according to how many members it has on our site. Our thinking is that this can be used as a comparison tool–a way for individual users to think about how they’re building their network relative to others in their field.
To give an example, say you’re a gastroenterologist and you find that your peers are on average linked to twice as many primary care physicians as you; that knowledge might well hold value in how you pursue future connections. More broadly, it can lead to some interesting questions about hospital/clinic layout, and which specialities might be best served sharing space in order to facilitate the most needed communication. For non-doctors, seeing which groups connect most frequently and robustly can also be pretty fascinating.