Healthy, Wealthy, and Wired

Electronic medical records have the potential to improve care, save
money, and enhance the patient's experience with his or her health care system. EMRs also
could help transform the economics of health insurance, lead to data breaches of untold pain
and economic impact, and alter the role of physicians relative to insurers, employers, and
patients.

Automating the current, broken U.S. system (I can't speak for other countries), feels
unappealing, which means that implementing EMRs implies deeper transformation, parallel
to but much bigger than the changes brought about by corporate ERP implementations.

Better information regarding public health statistics is essential,
particularly given the experience with SARS and fears about future pandemics. But once
again, social, cultural, economic, and legal questions emerge. Ranging from "who owns the
data?" to "who defines how data is shared across jurisdictions?" to "who pays and who benefits?,"
these questions will test an already under-funded global public-health infrastructure. For
an upbeat and visually riveting vital statistics story, see "No More Boring Data" at
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

What does it mean to be human? Mechanical joints and prostheses are
rapidly becoming more sophisticated and digitized. When does a disability become an unfair
advantage? Oscar Pistorius is a South African sprinter whose 400 meter time is about a
second slow of Olympic qualifying. He's also a double amputee whose carbon-fiber "legs" are
challenging old ideas about fair competition. Or take Jesse Sullivan, a former lineman from
Tennessee who lost both arms in an electrical accident. He has a nerve-controlled
robotic arm connected to his chest. Told by his doctors not to baby the device, he returned one
time carrying his hand, which he had detached while starting a lawn mower. Cochlear implants
are already common solutions to hearing loss (Rush Limbaugh has one) and electrical
implants also help patients with Parkinson's Disease, so it is a short hop to implanted chips that
enhance brain function: when will 14-year-olds start getting "Harvard chips" to
enhance test-taking, piano-playing, physical endurance, and other competitive traits that
will help collegeadmissions - and beyond?

What will be the long-term effects of nearfield electromagnetic
emissions, particularly after they have been focused through the ear directly into people's
brains? Cell phone antennas
are a potential hazard, but so are earbuds and Bluetooth radios, and
nobody knows yet what might or could happen across broad populations with widely varying
spectrum allocations, cultural patterns, and governmental regulations.