Every now and then, maybe only once or twice in one's career, the entire arc of our work appears to complete itself. In this and other places, I have for some time now been offering disjointed comments on "The Participatory Web" in general and how it may impact our national healthcare problems in particular. Indeed, I've all but exhausted my personal resources (and sizable chunks of many of my friends' fortunes as well) in pursuit of a "Health-over-IP (HoIP)" vision . There are, perhaps, a few too many moving parts in HoIP; but, it's central thesis revolves around the notion that the most important, and heretofore mostly missing, piece in the healthcare puzzle is in more active end-user Participation. HoIP incorporated manifold Web 2.0 levers—indeed, its HiG (Health Navigator) descendant is now ranging into the wilds of Web 3.0—all in service of one goal: i.e., to better engage individuals in the active management of their own health.
It's been said (albeit a bit hyperbolically) that in the continuum of substance, form and timing the first two can be all but neglected;-) But seriously, the most common fate of visions like HoIP is that they're all too often too...visionary? Maybe the elements of HoIP and Hig will survive to have their day in the sun yet. Maybe not. But this post (and the ones to follow over the next several days) aspires to depict a larger arc, a bigger picture of of the larger and largely-overlooked keys to real progress: ways out of the otherwise more economically ruinous route that any number of sub-prime mortgage, automobile industry collapse even the ravages of double-digit unemployment have taken us! Specifically, if we don't start getting a better handle on our country's spiraling healthcare costs soon, the forward-looking picture of our way of life (not to mention health) is, to say the least, disturbing.
If I may be so bold, I'd like to begin this multi-post discussion with a simple formula, a prescription if you will to the big part of the cure to what ails US healthcare...
I've already spoken at length on the "Web 3.0" denominator; see also...
Download The Web 3.0 Idea In Brief2
And, I've alluded to the "P4" term as well; see also...
In subsequent posts, I'll talk a lot more about P4; but, in the meanwhile, for the overly anxious here are a few links of interest
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24703/
http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/mediaroom/Pages/release.aspx?newsID=5634
That leaves the "F4" term. And, in a way, F4 could be viewed as a/the recursive extension of the fourth P! That is, just as P4 comprises the new Predictive, Personalized, Preventive and Participatory medicine frontier, F4 is built upon varying degrees of Fear, Fame, Fortune and Fun!
Forgive all the, perhaps over the top and/or unnecessarily, complicated construction above. The long and short of it all is simply this...
- America's healthcare costs have already reached unsustainable proportions
- Supply and Access, therefore, will become the most difficult and divisive issues: current and projected medical technological advances could tend to actually worsen the problem
- The only apparent way to "bend the cost curve" downward is to lessen the aggregate incidence chronic diseases
- The best (if not the only) apparent way to deal with chronic afflictions is via pervasive end-user behavior change
- The most promising avenues to wellness maybe via P4; and the most active ingredient in P4 may be F4
- Finally, a coincident set of internet developments (more serious social networking and next-generation search techniques) are turning up the Web 3.0 gain daily!
