There has been a well-documented explosion in information in recent years. The amount of available data has grown so large that it is described as ‘Big Data’, and its creation as the ‘Big Data Big Bang’.
Like the big bang, the growth in data has been exponential. It has been estimated that the digital universe increased 50-fold in last decade and that 90% of all the digital data in the world were created in the last three years.
Big data problems are well-known and include concerns about privacy, legal and ethical guidelines, filtering and data accuracy. More recently, the more insidious, but equally serious issue of ‘information overload’ has been identified. Our collective and individual capacity of human attention is finite and simply cannot process all the available data. In fact, the rate at which data is being manufactured far exceeds our ability to consume it.
There is now a growing consensus that we face a digital attention crisis worldwide, leading to a paradoxical decay in knowledge and an emerging ‘attention market’ and ‘attention economy’ within which attention has become a valuable resource and increasingly scarce commodity.
In an attention market, the main challenge for the suppliers of information products – i.e. primary care clinicians and general practice teams – is to add intangibles that are valuable to consumers and cannot be reproduced (at any cost).
- Immediacy – timely access to services and information
- Personalization – information tailored to the individual
- Interpretation – the ability to ask the right questions and make best use of Big Data to support and guide decisions
- Authenticity – ensuring the information is accurate and relevant to the individual
- Availability – likelihood of being selected over other providers and products
These intangible qualities align seamlessly with the principles of the specialty of General Practice. Furthermore, primary care clinicians and staff have firsthand experience and understanding of the practical worth of giving patients our full attention.