Opensource Economics is still new for many people. Here, Law professor Yochai Benkler explains what it is and how it is shaping the human society.
The blogosphere got a bit excited today with an article on New York Times about the plans of Google and Microsoft to offer an online personalized health care records for consumers. This excitement was further enhanced by a post by Philipp Lenssen with screenshots of a prototype of Google Health service.
Right now, our health care records are at the mercy of doctors and insurance providers. US federal law allows us to request our health care records. However, these records are only available in a paper format. Even with the doctors and insurance providers, it is kept either in a paper format or in a proprietary software format. There is no option for patients to have their health records in the digital formats. After some egging by the Bush administration, some of the providers have moved the health records online. For example, my health care provider is offering my health records online. But it is not the case for everyone. Even among those providers who offer health records online, we are at the mercy of insurance companies or health care providers. There is no independent centralized personal health record “repository”, with the user (patient) having a complete control of who has access to what information about their health. This is the area which is interesting to both Google and Microsoft. Both the companies are working on a system to provide this opportunity for users. Please read the New York Times article for more information on this. I would also like to point out to Adam Bosworth’s detailed post on this topic. Fellow TechBiz Media blogger, Deepak Singh, has written quite a lot on this topic. Unlike Deepak, my interest in this area is more on the peripheral level. I will discuss about certain issues that are of interest to me and offer my opinions related to the privacy issues associated with an online Personal Health Record (PHR) system.
The first and foremost concern for me is that the health care records should be stored in a system that adopts open standards. Efforts are underway to develop open standards based methods to extract RDF data from xml documents. It is very important to develop Microformats to manage healthcare information. A company that uses open standards to store health data on their online system will gain the confidence of the users. This will ensure that user’s vital health care information is not locked down under a proprietary system and it is accessible without a need for a particular vendor providing applications.
The second and equally important concern is about the search engine offered by such vendors. It is very vital that a vertical search engine that could provide accurate information is made available. It is no easy task and companies like Google, Microsoft and many startups are working on this area. Since we cannot take chances with our health, the accuracy of the search engines becomes important. I expect Google to have an advantage in this area, even though Microsoft seems to have made some important acquisitions in this regard.
The final concern is about privacy. Many people have written about it. In fact, the fight over privacy could be the reason for the delay in the implementation of online PHRs. Some people are worried about putting all our health related information under a single company. I am not too worried about it. I would be comfortable with Google having my records than my insurance company or a health care provider or a startup as long as Google offers me a complete protection of my privacy. I am not all too worried about govt.’s ability to scrutinize my health records either. Anyway they will get my health records even if it is stored in a paper format. In fact, a big chunk of Americans don’t mind govt. looking into their health records including their genetic information (via link). As long as I have confidence that the company that offers online PHR will not mine my health data and not allow anyone else to look at it, I am fine with the privacy implications. It is up to Google or Microsoft or any other company, clamoring to hold my PHR data, to convince me on the privacy issues. It is a big mental shift for most of the people. Since I have understood about privacy in this Web 2.0 era and I am comfortable with the new age ideas about privacy, I am not all too worried about it when it comes to online PHRs. As long as I have a system where I can control who views what from my health care records, I am ready to use such a system.
It is time we make a paradigm shift about how we manage our health care records. It is time we learn more about our health and take into our hands the power to make intelligent and informed decisions about our health. To do this, an open standards based vendor neutral PHR with a good search engine and a good privacy policy is needed. Once we bring in this paradigm shift, we can then start wondering about how we can use the “artificial intelligence” of the semantic web to help us manage our health care better.
I would like to hear about what you think about online PHR systems and your concerns about it.
Deepak has a very good post on Google’s plans for scientific data. It is heartening to know that Google is working towards a future of open scientific data. Check out the post for more information.
I just posted my thoughts on Yahoo-Ebay merger at TechBizMedia. You can check the post here.
I just made a post on TechBizMedia about Google’s Linux plans. Check it out here.
Oliver Ryan, blogging for Fortune magazine, points out to the optimism expressed by LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye about the future of LinkedIn in the Facebook dominated world. They are confident that they will dominate the business networking scene. As Steve O’ Hear and Jeremiah Owyang clearly point out, it is going to be much difficult than the optimism expressed by the people at LinkedIn. LinkedIn in a Facebook world is akin to a vertical search engine in this Google world. It is possible to survive but it is extremely difficult. As both Steve and Jeremiah correctly point out, it will only take a few filters to be developed by Facebook to enter into the market of LinkedIn. Does this mean it is the end of LinkedIn? Not necessarily. They just have to readjust their strategy. As JP says, every enterprise now is a platform. It should be open and inclusive. LinkedIn should open up its API strategy and also integrate tightly into the Facebook platform. It is time for LinkedIn to get their API strategy correct. From what I read in media, they seem to be working on it.
The “social climate” inside Facebook is much warmer than LinkedIn. I do agree that LinkedIn is just a good networking tool for business but they could still make the process of business networking much more interesting than what it is right now. I do not agree with people who claim that there is no need for LinkedIn in this Facebook world. I am a kinda person who would like to separate my social life from my business life. LinkedIn proves to be a valuable tool for people like me. By using Facebook as an app for my social life and LinkedIn for my business networking, I could establish a clear demarcation between these two worlds. Using the Seinfeld quote, I can ensure that these two worlds do not collide. Any talk about Facebook consuming LinkedIn is premature. However, it is vital for LinkedIn to re-adjust their strategy in this Facebook dominated world, to ensure that a vertical player like them can also survive along with a monster. The fate of LinkedIn is now linked in directly to their approach in the current world where every enterprise is a platform. In short, it is a case of open up, collaborate and survive.
Darian Shirazi on Venture Beat says whipping up a “nationalistic” fervor in the startups is a good way to retain employees. A good tip for would be entrepreneurs.
The recent graffiti painting of the Facebook office is quite original – many people think it’s a waste of money but I happen to think that the replication of the iron fist – a symbol of revolution – is the greatest aesthetic statement that the company could have made internally to incite people to put their heart and soul into their work. This method of having people work towards a common goal is one that makes it practically impossible to leave a company.
Mike Arrington has this rant about what is happening in the valley
Times are good, money is flowing, and Silicon Valley sucks.
I don’t know what it is, but the same thing happened in the late nineties before the bubble burst. Lots of startups got funded that made no sense but people got excited anyway. A unique, beautiful and well executed idea was not a story worth talking about until that first round of big, eye-popping capital. People become more anxious, and more likely to snap at someone in anger or jealousy. Rumor mongering spikes, and a crucial balance is lost. It’s no longer about beautiful products and genius developers. It’s about the money and the status, and hot PR chicks and marketing departments.
I have to agree with him. Silicon Valley does look like how it was before the great dot com bust. Every dude next door has a “Web 2.0″ company churning out a product with whatever coding skills he/she has. The PR hype and parties everywhere reminds me of whatever we saw in the late 90s boom. Things need to cool down sometime pretty soon. Too much cacophony kills real innovation. We got Google, Amazon, etc out of the last bust. At that time, Silicon Valley got rid of “my boyfriend has got a dot com company syndrome” and started seeing real and consolidated innovation. It is time again for a slowdown so that we can absorb the “innovations” of the last couple of years into the mainstream and then get into a new cycle, again in a few years.
Nicholas Carr wrote an article on Guardian Unlimited about how more and more internet traffic is being sent to fewer and fewer sites. He compares data from 2001 to 2006 to argue his point. I think it is not right to make such a simplistic comparison and argue in favor of web consolidation among big players. The reasons for my argument against Carr’s thesis are
Taking all these factors into account, I wouldn’t say that we are moving into consolidation of web traffic to few big players. In fact, most of the top ten websites, mentioned in the Read/Write blog’s analysis, are just “facilitators or front door” for other smaller “individual sites”. It is premature to say that the Long Tail of the internet is shrinking.
Om Malik talks about the new kinda business which he calls “technology enabled companies”. He talks about the new wave of companies which tap into the Web 2.0 technologies and run fortune 500 kinda companies for 1/500 of the cost. It is a must read for people with interest in the tech sector.
Which brings me to my point: Moo is among the first wave of young businesses finally putting the so called Web 2.0 technologies to work to make good on the promise that this much-ballyhooed generation of start-ups has been vapidly pledging for far too long: that Web2.0 would reinvent the boring, the old fashioned and the antiquated.
