We live in a world of abundance. Abundance of food, technology, health innovation, content, data and, increasingly, intelligence. Unequally distributed (a topic for another day!) but abundant, nonetheless. And as a brief aside, have you seen quite how many teams there are in this year’s football World Cup?! An abundance! For healthcare, this abundance is extraordinary. We have more clinical evidence, more real-world data, more patient-generated information, more digital touchpoints, more biomarkers, more dashboards, more treatment options, more personalised medicine, and now more AI-generated support than ever before. In theory, this should be a golden age of better decisions. In practice though, it is more complicated. The more information we have, the more work we have to do in order to decide what deserves our attention, what we trust, and what we actually act upon. Attention has always been fragmented. Understanding the context has always been important. Cutting through the noise has always been essential. And belief alone has never been the only deciding factor. But now there’s even more to deal with, even more to process and we seem to have less time to do it in. That is why Behavioural science matters now more than ever. Understanding behaviour is not a “nice to have”. It is vital. The Data Avalanche is Real We are dealing with an unprecedented amount of information. In 2005 there was approximately 0.05-0.2 ZB of digital information in the world. By 2015 it was already 10-15 ZB in a year and in 2025 175-181 ZB of information was created. Year Global data created (approx.)ii 1955 ~0 ZB (effectively no digital data) 2005 ~0.05–0.2 ZB 2015 ~10–15 ZB 2025 ~175–181 ZB Do you know what a zettabyte is? I had to look it up. A zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes. A single zettabyte can hold 130 TRILLION books. OR 8 billion fully loaded iPhones with 128 GB of data (one for everyone on the planet) And we have 181 ZB created just last year. Abundance’ starts to feel an inadequate descriptor at such vast quantities. Healthcare is one of the most data-intensive parts of this picture. RBC Capital Markets has estimated that healthcare accounts for around 30% of global data volume. That figure should be treated with some caution however, as others have questioned how robustly the 30% claim is sourced, but the broader point is hard to dispute: healthcare data is vast, and fast-growing.iiiiv The scientific literature alone tells the story. The National Library of Medicine reported more than 1.5 million annual PubMed citations in FY2023, and PubMed now contains more than 40 million citations for biomedical literature. No doctor, however brilliant or committed, can read everything. No specialist can fully absorb every paper, guideline update, congress presentation, real-world evidence study, patient preference dataset and emerging treatment signal relevant to their field. As much as we like to think of doctors as being fully rational beings, they are still human. They do what humans are designed to do. They simplify. Heuristics Are Not Flaws. They are Survival Tools Behavioural science gives us a language for something we all experience: when the world is too complex, we use shortcuts. These mental shortcuts, or heuristics, help us make decisions efficiently. They allow us to drive a familiar route while thinking about the day ahead. They help us scan a supermarket shelf without evaluating every possible cereal (unless, of course, you have your children with you). And they allow clinicians to recognise familiar patterns, prioritise urgent risks and make rapid judgements under pressure. In medicine, heuristics are not a sign of poor thinking. They are often a sign of expert thinking. Application of many hours of practice in an efficient manner to give you the confident guidance you’d expect from your physician. The challenge is that shortcuts can be both useful and risky (cutting through that farmer’s field to save the couple of hours it would take to walk around it seemed like a great idea, until you stumbled upon the bull). Clinical decision-making research has long recognised that doctors use heuristics and that these can support rapid judgement but may also contribute to unhelpful biases. For example: -Anchoring: Where an early impression to shape later interpretation – can lead to clinicians sticking with an initial diagnosis despite new information e.g. assuming chest pain is musculoskeletal and underweighting later signs of cardiac risk -Availability Heuristic: Where a recent or memorable case can feel more common than it is – can lead to overestimating the likelihood of similar diagnoses. e.g. after diagnosing or missing a pulmonary embolism (PE), clinicians often see it “everywhere” in patients with mild chest pain or breathlessness -Confirmation Bias: Where people notice evidence that supports what they already believe – can lead to seeking or weighting information that reinforces a working diagnosis while discounting signs that suggest an alternative. e.g. focusing on symptoms consistent with asthma while overlooking features indicating cardiac causes of breathlessness. That does not make clinicians irrational. It makes them human. Better information does not automatically lead to better decisions. Information does not land in a vacuum, it lands in a mind, a consultation, a set of habits and in a set of pressures. Behavioural science helps us understand that environment and adapt the way in which information is delivered to fit the context it will be received in. The Gap Between Evidence and Action is Where Bealthcare Brands Succeed or Fail So, what does need to happen for this information to be noticed, believed, remembered, prioritised and acted upon in the real world? We need to unpack the landscape this new information will fall into. We need to dig deeper to access the fundamental reality of why a physician turns to a treatment in a particular scenario. What is it about the patient in front of them? What is it about the experiences with the range of treatments they have in their armamentarium that’s left the impression that this will be the best option for this patient right now? What is it about their day that’s made them feel more comfortable with innovation or in need of more certainty? Behavioural science provides us with frameworks to the questions we are asking to ensure we cover all bases with rigour. It also gives us the tools to provide what actions need to be taken to overcome barriers or ease the assimilation of the information. Crucially, behavioural science helps brands communicate in ways that respect the reality of healthcare decision-making. Making good decisions easier. So Why Now? Because AI will not make healthcare less complex. It will make some things easier, some things faster and some things better. But it will also create new forms of uncertainty, new trust dynamics and new decision behaviours. Doctors will continue to rely on heuristics, not because they don’t care, but because they are human experts working in impossible information environments. Patients will continue to need clarity, empathy and support, not simply access to more content. Healthcare brands will need to earn attention and trust in a world where both are increasingly scarce. And because the future of healthcare decision-making will not be shaped by data alone, tt will be shaped by the interaction between data, the landscape in which it arrives and human behaviour. That is why behavioural science is so valuable now, not as a buzzword, not as a workshop add-on, not as a decorative layer on top of research. But as a practical, rigorous way to understand how healthcare decisions are really made, and how to help better decisions happen. In the age of artificial intelligence, human intelligence still matters. Understanding it matters even more. If you’d like to discuss this piece further with our team, fill in the contact form below. References: i. We Are Gods, By Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler ii. Amount of Data Created Daily iii. The healthcare data explosion iv. No, Healthcare Isn’t 30% of the World’s Data v. MEDLINE PubMed Production Statistics Apply Now!