Information and communication technology (ICT) had a huge impact on the healthcare services and the Internet plays an important role in forming patients’ attitudes towards health related services. Although the Internet mentioned as one of the major contributors in todays’ Information Overload (IO), common notion is that healthcare sector has been remained immune of IO effects.
Throughout an action research, this study showed that IO has significant impact on treatment sessions of patients suffering from chronicle mental disorders in two ways. Firstly, patients’ acquired information from the Internet bombards physician in the treatment sessions, which eventually slows down the treatment process. Secondly, protocols and administrative procedures are subject to change, which leads to frustrating relearning cycles due to the huge amount of information attaching to them.
Also, physicians have a tendency to keep themselves updated about new achievements in their field, which adds to the IO problem. In an attempt to enhance the situation an application model purposed in the second half of this research, which uses social web as a platform to provide a service based on Information Logistics (IL) principles to deal with the problem of IO.
Source: Linnaeus University
Author: Golshan, Behrooz