A great talk by Union Square Venture’s Albert Wenger on the fundamental implications of Zero Marginal Cost:

“Why is everyone going online? It turns out there’s a simple answer to that: Kittens. Everyone wants to see Kittens. Well there’s actually something more to this, there’s something serious to this because when I downloaded this image from Flickr there was no noticeable cost to anybody. The marginal cost of creating a copy in the digital world is zero and that is driving all the changes that we’re seeing… …and we’re just at the beginning of this change”

I think this is something that is having a very interesting impact on how medicine is practiced and the outcomes that are achievable with mHealth. Things to look forward to:

> We will stop talking about healthcare records in terms of out of date property ownership laws and the siloed uninteroperable approaches that today prevent collaboration will die away. In 2022 (when the RCGP envisions that Patients will be able to incredible things like book appointments with Doctors on their mobile) talking about who owns an Electronic Health Record will seem as daft as us today trying to talk about who owns a picture of a cat that’s been shared openly across the internet.

> Talented Doctors who until now worked like the shoemaker with one Patient at a time will advance the experience of Patients and Carers today, be rewarded for documenting the care of their Patients and be able to distribute their talents much wider and will be able to get rewarded for their online reputation (I think there’s a lot to learn from smart clinicians like Howard Luks MD who are already doing this).

> Turning Atoms into Bits will transform how we manage chronic disease and make it nonsensical for us to think about going somewhere to share some medical data.

How do you think ‘Zero Marginal Cost‘ will transform healthcare?