We often hear the term ‘information age’ used in conversation, at conferences, and even in marketing press. Information consists of data that are organized in a meaningful way to be used by humans and computers (or machines) to form insights. When used with computers, the information is intended to be available to assist humans in decision making (not make the decisions).
However, more information does not always equate to being better informed on a topic. At a certain point, one starts to feel overwhelmed with how much information is available to access. To relate this to an everyday example, consider when out at a restaurant and given a menu. Some restaurants have a menu with pages and pages of different choices to choose from for a meal. An abundance of options to review in a few minutes of time can lead to decision fatigue. ‘What should I get? Did I see everything? I don’t want to hold everyone else up. I need to pick something.’ Other menus might have just a few options to choose from that makes the decision a bit easier (as long as you find something you’ll eat and like! ). The decision fatigue can feel a bit paralyzing and may not necessarily lead to selecting the optimal choice for the person.
Today, we have pages and pages and pages of endless information available to us as consumers. Yet, not all of it is necessary to know. Additionally, when sources are conflicting or providing confusing information, what does one rely on to learn about a health condition or treatment?
Information science has two concepts around information flow that one may not even realize is occurring on a daily, hourly, and perhaps at times, minute-by-minute basis. The two concepts are referred to as push and pull. Information can be either pushed to the user or pulled from a source. Both processes are necessary.
While I was a student, across all my degree programs, I needed to physically go to the library in order to find sources I needed for assignments, projects, and of course, my dissertation. I spent many hours and days in different libraries. I even had to travel to a few other libraries that had a source I needed to review and add to my work. This action is considered an information pull. One is looking for something specific. Today, one can access such resources from the internet and largely without having to physically be in a library. (This has some benefits in terms of time savings but I often enjoyed my study hours hiding away someplace quiet and sinking in to the material without interruption).
Traditional information pushes include, but are not limited to, commercials, billboards, advertisements, and mailers. However, with the internet and increasing global use of social platforms, the opportunity to push information now has many potential places to live and grow. Unfortunately, we now have the push and pull sources largely living in the same digital interweb space. This leads to a confluence of information available to know, that may not be necessary to know for the person or the purpose at front of mind.
As we move to use large language generative artificial intelligence models more frequently, we enter another layer of uncharted territory. What is available to know for that particular model is used to generate a response for a pull request <insert head exploding emoji >. The person is pulling a response that is a summation of pushed resources for something they may need to know. However, is what is in that model accurate, reliable, and valid? How do we as the user know? More specifically, how does one as a patient know how to differentiate what they need to know versus what is available to know?
Taking this back to healthcare and from a patient perspective, I will often ask, ‘Why do you need to know that?’ when I am asked a question either upon scheduling an appointment or at the start of a visit. Is every question being asked relevant to the reason I am there? I do not always believe so. Sure, I can answer the question for you, but I do not always see the relevance of some questions to the visit.
All of this is to say that we depend on technology today for information. One would be challenged to find the necessary data and information solely on paper based resources to be effective for oneself or for ones patients. Yet, our methods for differentiating between what we need to know from what is available to know remains an opportunity to explore further.
~ Dr. Kelley
