Present problem in E-learning in health care redefined-Why does all our information oversupply fail to satisfactorily answer the needs of a given individual patient or physician?

Average patient data, which occupies most of our present day information bases, is often unable to satisfy individual patient needs. In spite of the medical information base expanding unprecedented at present we still do not have that quality of information to satisfy a given individual patient to an optimal extent.

To quote from an important article on information needs,

“Thirdly, the questions are often complex and multidimensional. They are often questions about both particular patients and different areas of medical knowledge--for example, "In an octogenarian with anemia, angina, and a history of transient ischemic attacks, with a normal creatinine, iron, and mean corpuscular volume, who refuses a bone marrow exam, what diagnostic and therapeutic options are there?"

Fourthly, the need for information is often much more than a question about medical knowledge. Doctors are looking for guidance, psychological support, affirmation, commiseration, sympathy, judgment, and feedback. This "information need" is particularly poorly explored, and yet it may well be the most important need and the biggest stumbling block to a technical solution.

Fifthly, most of the questions generated in consultations go unanswered. (2)

Seeking Solution: How then do we care for the multidimensional information needs every individual can generate? Does information technology offer a solution?

We need an information base that can seamlessly integrate information needs of all categories of certain individual medical learners namely patients, medical students who are also health professionals with matching solutions offered by other individual medical learners who have already gone through the particular experience the other group needs.

We need to have a medical learning database where patients and medical students/health care givers regularly key in their narrative logs into a suitable web interfacing device (presently PDAs are the closest fit although in the near future it is expected to improve into something wearable with a more efficient input arrangement than the PDA stylus keyboard).