JUST ENOUGH

It has been a privilege to be part of a COLLECTIVE movement in medical information practice transitioning from JUST IN CASE education (Attempt to memorize it all in case you need it someday) to JUST IN TIME information management (Find it when you need it).  Resources like the Internet and DynaMed Plus have transformed our expectations and behaviors in medical education and medical practice.

But now that the Internet is no longer novel and a generation of use has reached the point where it is an expected baseline taken for granted, we are overwhelmed by information overload. We have shifted our expectation and behavior from excitement to find many results and sift through them to disappointment and moving on if the first or second result is not exactly what we seek. We also want our information in the smallest of windows and the smallest doses.

We still need to get information JUST IN TIME but I was struck by a “Just Thinking” blog post with a graphic suggesting the next phase for knowledge management is JUST ENOUGH.

Our challenge for the next generation of DynaMed Plus is to provide JUST ENOUGH information JUST IN TIME, JUST IN CASE someone somewhere in the world is in need of medical information support. That is our next COLLECTIVE challenge. (And if I am still writing these posts a few years from now and write something about a privilege to be part of a COLLECTIVE movement transitioning to JUST ENOUGH information, then it will be time to embrace customization for JUST FOR ME and go beyond the COLLECTIVE.)