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The solution isn't throwing technology at it to do "automated evidence synthesis," it's making it easier and more affordable for people to talk to get a consultation with an actual medical professional.
Hint: it’s Wikipedia.
It's part of what I mentioned in another comment which is that the internet is to general and vague in its information (and generally low-mid quality) while private information is, sometimes, of higher quality. It leads people who want to learn more about things in a bind where they are limited by the accessibility to good quality information.
Also you don't want the GP to have access to uptodate because they would self diagnose in so many of the wrong ways and wouldn't understand everything.
Is that a US thing? Because I’m looking at the small-print paper thingie that came (has to come) with a moderately dramatic prescription drug, and it has:
“Side effects:
very frequent ( ≥ 10%): ...
frequent ( ≥ 1% and infrequent ( ≥ 0.1% and rare ( ≥ 0.01% and very rare ( The following side effects were observed after this drug was released to market. The incidence rate is considered to be unknown, as it cannot be estimated from the available data.
...”
(This seems especially weird because I expect most of the data to have come from FDA submissions.)
The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…
We had these "really good sources of information" - we had forums dedicated to almost any topic you could want to know about, and people educated in the area would frequent them.
They've almost all died out - some remain as a mostly static reference (which is incredibly useful!), others continue to plod along. A few subreddits pop up now and then, but it's not really the same thing (subreddits are even more prone to "flooding" from outside "contributors" who end up turning it into a meme-reddit).
If a company is tangentially related to a topic, you can do worse than dedicating a few full-time employees to a forum on that topic. We're posting on one right now!
Partly because they're written to pass peer review, not to inform practitioners or the public.
I want to know one main thing before I read your study - Why should I believe your study? That is: what is the sample size, did you pre-register methods, who funded the study, what type of study is it, etc.
Studies are written for paper publications, but that hasn't been the main distribution method for years.
The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…
If only there were some association of all people, some kind of organization that included all members of the public, which could collect a nominal fee for common goods and services and then provide them freely after the fact. Some sort of union that governs what goods and services are provided...
Issues with providing the same quality of service to consumers include:
* Doctors are willing to pay a lot (ex: UpToDate is ~$500/y) and you might not be able to keep such high fees for doctors if you also offered a great consumer-focused option.
* Consumers have a wide range of experience levels, where it's going to be hard to make a page that satisfies both people who know very little and have minimal medical background and others who are looking seriously into their condition.
* Liability is very different when you're writing directly for consumers.