For years and years now we’ve heard how the Medical profession has always been slow in adopting new technologies. That was the fundamental premise behind the failed attempts of compnies like Healtheon/WebMD and a gazillion other startups that were out to revolutionize the medical profession by introducing better proceses and technologies. But they all seemed to have failed or fizzled out. Some brave souls may still be at it, but it doesn’t look like any oerson or company will be able to bring about the sea-change that was envisioned.

Why? My theory is simple. Any such change would involve a fundamental change in behavior of the practitioners of the profession. The doctors of today are used to writing prescriptions on little pieces of paper in handwritings that can only be deciphered by pharmacists (and sometimes not even them) and faxing medical records back and forth with absolutely no centralized repository. Heck, my own doctors probably can’t keep their records straight without requesting multiple copies from each other! All the companies that endeavored to alleviate these problems which plague the current medical system (mainly referring to the US here, the medical systems in other countries esp. India have more fundamental problems that would need to be addressed first!) failebecause they could not get buy-in from the current practitioners.

However, I’ve recently been observing several Pitt Med Students who frequent my neighborhood Starbucks haunt. And I realized last week that there is a change in the making. A change in how the new generation of students think and act. A change in how the new generation of med students are as toy-happy as the other geek on the street. Technology is innate to this generation. When these med students finish their residencies and begin to permeate the medical profession, the change that all the companies were trying to achieve will happen. It will happen not because any one or more companies became the agents for that change but more so at a grassroots level… where the doctor you will be seeing in 3-5 years of maybe 10 years from now will probably be more comfortable typing on a computer than writing on a pad of paper and more comfortable writing prescriptions in Graffiti (Palm) than in the cryptic undecipherable handwriting. It is then that all the new technologies that are out there will be ready for mass adoption. When the prescription/diagnosis goes over a wireless network directly to the pharmacy for fulfilment and directly into a centralized repository for building a comprehensive patient view. Heck we designed this stuff from a technology point of view five years ago when I was in grad school.

The technology is there, but it doesn’t hold the answer. The adoption will only happen when the people who need to adopt the new technologies are primed and ready… which will be soon. There is a revolution every ten years — because what we think is so cool and so new and amazing, comes to the next generation as a given. In my time, Instant Messaging is the cool thing. But for those in high school and college… it’s been around forever and it’s a normal means of communication.

And I know this is a very harsh way of putting it, but I’ll do so to drive the point home: Sometimes in order for something new to be accepted, those with the old ideas need to get out of the way first. The dinosaurs died for a reason.

I’ve been more and more inclined to return to the academia recently and as part of this endeavor while I await the edict of the powers that be to make that happen or not, I’ve been encouraging myself to participate in more academic discussions on various topics. So every once in a while I’ll pick up a book which would otherwise be considered esoteric or go attend a lecture at CMU (especially when they have guest speakers).

Recently as I was reading a book by Feynman, he touched on the topic of why academics (80/20 rule applies) always try to make everything sound a lot more complex than it really needs to be. Here is the example he used:



There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read – something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail or it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I had this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until I finally said to myself, “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.

So I stopped – at random – and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The invidivual member of the social community often received his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People Read.”

Now, I remember realizing this at some point when I was at CMU, but I also seem to have lost sight of it along the way. In fact my own blogs were at one point getting convoluted. But having read that again it reminded me of what really matters is the ability to get your point across – in a simple way. Sometimes it’s good to treat it kind of like a game. The academic lingo and jargon and big fancy words are all part of a code and if you can succeed in deciphering that code, you have conquered the secret to actually understanding what you need to know!

One of the talks I attended recently was like this. It was on a subject that I had little to no prior knowledge about. But if I would take the words that were being used and apply first principles to them, it made a little sense. Now, of course, the fact that I had to translate along the way made me a little slower on the uptake, but I probably learnt more from that exercise than a lot of people who didn’t go through that process.

Curious if this works for different subjects, so I’m just going to have to sneak my way into more lectures in different topics at CMU! 😉

I don’t quite recall when it was but somewhere along the way I came to the realization that there is no human being that I can idolize. Or forget human being, I doubt I could idolize anything. That realization was really part of a bigger picture of realizing that you can do anything. And some people do something better than others, but you do somehing better than any of those people. Everyone has flaws. Everyone has their virtues.

So that said, I’m amazed by how people do not think and let their minds succumb to idolizing celebrities and essentially go overboard with their expression of interest in someone or something. The Superbowl is a prime example. After nearly a decade of not understanding American Football at all I finally decided to make the attempt to atleast understand the game. And I think I get the basic idea. But I doubt I could ever be as rabid a fan as you come across for Football because to me Football, like everything else is just another game. Some people play better than others. But that’s not the be all and end all of it. At the end of the day it is entertainment. And I like my entertainment to be just that – entertainment, not a source of anxiety or stress.

Now, “celebrities” is a hole other thing which I don’t get. I can respect someone because of their achievements in their field, but they are all unltimately people like you and me. The great than thou thing just doesn’t work for me. Yes, Russel Crowe, Nicholas Cage and Kevin Spacey are great actors. But that’s all they are to me great actors. And yes, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock and Gweneth Paltrow and the vast aray of other beautiful women that adorn the silver screen are gorgeous, but that’s about it.

I guess my point here is about drawing the subtle line between respecting someone for who they are and what they are done as opposed to idolizing someone to make them something they’re not.