Steve Case, co-founder and CEO of America Online, former chairman of AOL Time Warner and now CEO of investment firm REVOLUTION, sees a revolution ahead in what he calls the “Third Wave” of the internet. In his new book, “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future”, Case predicts the “ubiquitous connectivity” of the internet “will integrate it into every part of our lives: how we learn, how we heal, how we manage our finances, how we get around, how we work, even what we eat.”
I’d say this integration is well underway. In the case of “how I heal,“ my primary care doctor and I now communicate through a “patient portal” on the internet. I can make appointments and request prescription refills. And after my last visit – a regular checkup – I received a 3-page summary of my visit in PDF format that very same day via the portal. The summary included a list of my current medications, vital signs, initial lab test results and future appointments.
The next day I received a 2-page PDF with 49 lab test results – blood counts, liver and kidney functions, blood sugar, cholesterol, and things I never heard of. And four days after that I received a 12-page “Health Overview” with all the previous information plus previous lab results that included things like Glom Fit Rate (GFR) and Eosinophil (Absolute).
Well Mr. Case, TMI? I want to know what all those numbers might mean. What I’d like is a guide on what my most important lab results should be, so I could see for myself whether my blood sugar, for instance, is within a normal range…although I trust my doctor’s reading that it’s within “normal” limits.