Professor Martin Gellerstedt is an associate professor in Informatics, specialized in statistics and scientific methods, at University West, Sweden. I have been combining teaching, research and consulting for nearly three decades and I regard myself as a"pracademician". I enjoy applied research which involves informatics and smart use of data. In particular, I have followed the interesting development of Evidence based medicine and the increased engagement from patients to study, discuss and monitor their own disease. I am head of the SPSS-Academy – a cooperation between the University West and IBM/SPSS offering courses in statistics on campus and online. I am also deeply committed in post-graduate education as chair of the subject committee post graduate education in informatics and work-integrated learning at University West.

Imagine a life without variation – wouldn’t that be unbearably boring? It is clear that, we as humans being should appreciate variability in our everyday lives. But, on the other hand the uncertainty that goes hand in hand with variability, is sometimes a challenge to handle when making decisions. Medicine was sometimes, at least some decades ago, referred to as the “art of making decisions without adequate information”. But isn’t there information enough today? Well, this talk will give an overview of the Evidence based crusade in health care and give some reflections regarding “adequate information”, from classical randomized controlled trials to potentials with social media.