Digital Revalution

The digital revolution is becoming real. Walk around any city or town and what do you see? You see young people text messaging; friends snapping photos on their camera phones. Look a bit further and you see financial decisions aided by market information called up on hand-held devices; executives using wireless technology as tools; registration of users for events using web technologies. Look further still and you see executives going digital and cutting mammoth costs out of supply chains. And sometimes you may even see wireless devices providing opportunity in communities that don’t even have electricity.
Just think about the changes taking place with photography today. Photography used to be a physical process. You took a picture and something happened in your camera; you took your film to a photo shop and developed and sorted your pictures and put some in a photo album. Today photography is increasingly not only digital but also mobile, virtual and personal: mobile because you can do your digital photo works anywhere at any time; virtual in that others can enjoy it without being there with you; and it’s personal in that you can edit the digital image and use it in any way you want.
It’s an empowering situation, but also a bit scary, because it’s a leap into the unknown. Nobody knows for sure how to equip themselves. Anybody who says they do is lying.
There is no doubt about the results we can reap from this transformation. Brand new business models and opportunities spring from new vistas opened. However, leaping into unknown has to be done with cautious and prudent manner.
Today's healthcare industry is under pressure to reduce clinical and administrative costs and meet tighter compliance and security mandates. Digitized health-care records have the potential to improve the efficiency and quality of care and to help patients manage their own health. It will be real health reform. A digital health-care system can offer greater privacy protection to patients than paper records do today. The transition, however, will require the right mix of government regulation, technology choices and patient education. Some difficult policy decisions will need to be made.
Achieving these will make the ultimate health-care system we are talking about; its complexity is epic and its reform requires solid solutions. With a good combination of privacy regulations, technological tools and public awareness, health information technology can provide greater efficiency and privacy.
Getting there is going to require the right blend of realism and optimism. We need to be realistic that none of this is going to be easy. But we also need to be optimistic, because if we get this right, digital technology will make more things more possible for more people in more places than at any time in history. That alone is worth the journey.