Healthcare 2.0, Web 2.0, etc

I am a huge fan of the phrase, “What if?” Thinking is vastly underrated, especially by those who don’t—think, that is. Where are all the what-iffers?

On the overrated side are the 2.0’s and 3.0’s. Those terms connote a handful of things, none of which are particularly helpful. It is as though those in the web 2.0 club see themselves as having arrived; as being somewhere better than those still mired in the one-dot-oh’s that comprise their cloistered universe. Maybe it is just a level of enlightenment or attainment which comes from having been to the mountain top. They Tweet with their David Attenboroughish British accents, revealing tidbits information heretofore unknown to the 1.0 crowd.

May I suggest the problem with the dot-ohs is the notion that there is some sort of deliverable, some point at which one is no longer striving to get to the oh-ness because one has arrived. Then what? I think that is why the uptake of the dot-oh concepts by the C-suiters is so low. Web 2.0. Health 2.0. Social Media 2.0. They are still paying for all the one-dot-oh initiatives, initiatives which for the most part failed to deliver.

There is no end point, no date in late October where anyone can say with any credibility, “We’ve arrived at the dot-oh end point. It is a silly notion to believe that any of these initiatives are ever complete or exist in isolation. I propose we use new nomenclature, something which suggest does not have an endpoint. A transcendental number, a number with no end. Irrational—like me. Pi—π. Health π. Web π. Social media π.

Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy