Healthcare Information Seeking
Suzy
Problem statement
Healthcare workers as well as patients have unmet information needs. Information seeking is a key facilitator for promoting, maintaining, and returning to health as broadly conceived.
The list of suggestions to start with information seeking will help to improve the search skill as well as to find information needs.
Carrier, Field, Channel, Source, and Message
Information carrier is that the primary repositories of information available to individuals within their information fields.
A field in information seeking is can be broadly defined as those related to determining a user's information needs, searching for behavior, and subsequent use of information.
A channel is an information transmission system such as magazines, the internet or a book.
A source is an individual or an institution that originates a message such as TV, radio, printed media, internet or social media.
Messages are the important building blocks of which the other units are composed, the complex factor of carriers which consist of the words, symbols, or signals.
Demographic Factor &Socio-psychological factor& Salience
A demographic factors that can affect healthcare information seeking behavior are a person's age, gender, racial/ethnic differences, income range, education level, socio economic status, and place of residence.
A socio-psychological factor would be gender, age, racial , ethnic differences, education, and socio-economic status.
Salience is a term that information is valued to the degree. This is to an individual that the perceived applicability of information to a problem a person faces. Salience is directly related to the “rate of information acquisition.
Uses and Gratification Theory
The uses and gratification theory calls the flow of media research “what does the media do to people? It turned into a question of “What do people do with the media?” In a multimedia environment where various media compete for the attention of rare media users, the basic assumption of the use and satisfaction theory that “media competes with other means to satisfy the needs of audiences” is still valid.
Cognitive Model of Information Seeking
The cognitive model of information seeking provides a broad perspective on how people work in the world. According to the cognitive model, people need to know what their information goals are and what they are looking for. They use their mental models of situations to determine the kind of behavior in the world that affects themselves, others, or things with the aim of achieving their goals.
Berry-Picking Model of Information Seeking
Berry-Picking has been very productive and, in many ways, has enhanced our understanding of information retrieval. The model recognizes that individuals are actively seeking health information and use a variety of sources to gather information related to their specific needs. This model emphasizes the importance of understanding the situation in which individuals find information and the various sources of information available.
Recommendations: Educating the Public & Creating Rich information fields
Increase awareness of health among the public -> to increase the richness of information fields; provide Internet access or a laptop for an easier access of resources
Physical Environment-> when patient seek diagnosis and subsequent treatment-> should mind the physical environment of health institutions serving clients.
Minimize physical barriers-> Increase ambient information that can be easily observed or overheard.
Recommendations:Health Information Technology
Improvement in Health Information Technology-> Major strategy to reduce uniquely expensive healthcare system and bloated administrative costs.
1) Data Storage
2) Databases
3) Data Transport
Telecommunications
Services provided by the National Institutes of Health
National Library of Medicine
National Cancer Institute
4) Data Transformation
Data Dashboards
Discussions
