GLOCALIZATION

If I can’t pick DynaMed my favorite NEOLOGISM is GLOCALIZATION.

GLOCALIZATION was popularized as a term by Roland Robertson who defined it as the simultaneity (or co-presence) of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies. GLOCALIZATION combines globalization (We want the best information in the world) with localization (We want the most relevant information for our local circumstances)

RAPADAPTE is a GLOCALIZATION solution – offering a SATISFICING solution to overcome the CATCH 22 of needing to produce a guideline for areas of limited resources with high input from local resources but the local resources need the resources to provide a high-quality guideline.

The DynaMed mission is to provide the most useful information for health care professionals at the point of care.

If you are reading this, anywhere in the world, you and I have 99.9% of our DNA in common.  Identifying, critically appraising, and synthesizing the best evidence and guidance from anywhere in the world is a tremendous value – much of it relates and greatly expands our knowledge compared to what we would think we know if we limited ourselves to knowledge from one country.

But to provide the most useful information we need to provide the contextually relevant information. This could mean making inclusion criteria clear for evidence or application criteria clear for recommendations so it is easier to associate (or not) with specific patients. This could mean describing the intervention with sufficient detail to determine if and how it could be applied.

We have been fortunate to travel to many places and have virtual contact with health care professionals from many more.  We have so much feedback from so many places that adding localization makes our content even more useful. And we have done this in many ways. Examples include listing guidelines from around the world (there are now about 18,000 guidelines across DynaMed organized by clinical topic then by geographic region), listing brand names for drugs in multiple countries, and providing additional information in specific topics where local factors are especially important (such as snakebites where it is obvious, or strep throat where you may not have recognized the different needs in certain ethnic groups or geographic regions in Australia and New Zealand).

DynaMed Plus has allowed substantial growth in meeting the DynaMed mission and we are excited that we will soon be seeking “GLOCALIZATION EDITORS” to help us provide the most useful information for health care professionals at the point of care in a specific country.