After six tough rounds, we have finally whittled the field from 64 down to one champion.
And the winner is: big data.
That's right. The term referring to massive amounts of information—one that carries plenty of promise in personalized medicine, drug development and population health based on how it's analyzed—has also been turned into one of the most nebulous ingredients in the word soup of health buzzwords.
As one of our voters said: "Big data seems to be the cure for everything. Just remember garbage in, garbage out!"
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With 105 votes, big data took 64% of your vote to value proposition's 36%.
As one of you put it: "Who comes up with these terms? Data is data. The description, in my humble opinion, reflects the ego of the person presenting the data, not the data alone."
That's not to say there weren't supporters of value proposition taking the title as most overused. "I envision a world where all actions create value. Is that naïve?" one voter wrote.
Perhaps, dear reader, it is.
What about the other words?
We also asked which words or terms you thought should have won.
Several voters were bummed about the elimination of "disruption," including one of you who said, "I feel like puking when I hear it." "Blockchain" and "interoperability" were also among the buzzwords knocked from our bracket that plenty of you thought should have won.
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One my favorites that got knocked out early, "bending the cost curve," got a few honorable mentions.
In addition to our inclusions, voters offered additional suggestions of buzzwords that didn't make it into the bracket this year including "value-added," "health equity" and "bleeding edge."
"People should really stop using that term in an industry that involves the use of scalpels," one voter wrote.
Perhaps one of our most poignant suggestions was from a reader who suggested "healthcare" itself ought to have made the cut.
"We have a system of sick care; alas that we had health care …" the reader said.
That's it for our 2019 #FierceMadness Health Buzzwords Tournament. Thank you, everyone, for your help selecting our champion. We hope you all had fun getting the chance to vote, and we hope to see you all again next year.