Change is in the air
For a couple of years now I’ve been doing some forward-looking at the likely new trends in the outsourcing paradigm which will result from the inevitable mass marketing of high-speed, always-on global internet. The virtual provisioning of consumer medical services plays highly into any scenario one can imagine due to the cluster f–k nature of the current system. We are not yet to the point described in the piece linked above, but the free on-line service offered by San Francisco-based Medem Inc. is certainly a move in that direction.
Connie Grimstad doesn’t need to call her doctor’s office when she has a question about the slew of medications she takes daily - the 57-year-old homemaker simply delves into her medical records from her home computer. As the medical industry moves slowly to replace its paper files with electronic versions, people like Grimstad are light years ahead of most doctors.
She’s among about 10,000 Americans who’ve made the leap with a free online service that permits anyone to create their own electronic personal health record - and access it anywhere via the Internet. With a few keystrokes, everything’s there: the details of her prescriptions, health insurance records, diagnoses and surgeries.
It’s coming folks. Hang on to your ass. And not just in the medical industry. Every industry will succumb to the huge savings of outsourcing. The technological advances in the next ten years in secure, high speed telecommunications will bring a lot of changes to our society and culture.
The biggest change being that of devolving the currently centralized power of commerce and government back to the lowest common denominator, the individual. If I can safely and securely acquire quality medical care for a fraction of what the same care costs today, I do not need the government involved in managing health care. Nor do I need to worry so much about the astronomical insurance prices because I won’t need as much insurance. Nor will have to deal with the idiots at the HMO, PPO, or whatever other bureaucracy is currently in charge of my personal well-being.
The economical advantages are huge. Just as organizations purchase computer programming services (brainpower) from places like India, so will the individual begin to acquire goods and services, like computer programming, legal services, and medical consults from less expensive sources overseas.
Outsourcing. Its not just for big companies anymore. Despite the best efforts of those vested in the status quo, such as big government devotees, unions, entrenched medical providers and health insurers, etc, the industrious entrepreneur will not be denied. It is the American way.