“Too Much Information”

H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH

Professor of Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine

Professor of Public Policy at Dartmouth College

Professor of Business Administration at the Amos Tuck School

Hanover, NH

8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

Auditorium E, Rubin Building, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center 

Co-sponsored by the Department of Medicine

Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth

Objectives – Participants will be able to:

• Examine an assumption that seems to be a central tenant of the 21^st century: It never hurts to get more information. 
• Evaluate the findings of 4 randomized trials testing the value of more clinical information in patients who are sick.
• Reflect on the value of having more clinical information (e.g. monitoring, genetic testing) when you are well.
• Distinguish between data, information and useful knowledge.

H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH

Dr. Welch is a general internist at the White River Junction VA and a professor of Medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research.

For the 25 years he has been practicing medicine, Dr. Welch has been asking hard questions about his profession. His arguments are frequently counter-intuitive, even heretical, yet have regularly appeared in the country's most prestigious medical journals — Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute — as well as in op-eds in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.