What is information therapy?

As doctors, we educate and inform patients every day. Some people call this patient education or patient communication. I like to call it information therapy, which can be defined as a prescription of the right information, for the right patient, at the right time, to help make a better health decision.

“Information therapy can be defined as a prescription for the right information, for the right patient, at the right time, to help make a better health decision.”
-Aniruddha Malpani, MD, medical director of Malpani Infertility Clinic in Mumbai, India, and author of a physician and patient education blog

Part of the reason patients need information therapy is actually because of the large amount of medical information—much of it unreliable—available online. An overload of information has resulted in information smog, which often leads to...