InterpretMyXray.com

Some innovative solutions are needed with increasing medical system pressures from aging populations coupled with an elucidated understanding of the medical process, that medical mistakes occur about a third of the time, mainly due to cognitive error.

What about a Web 2.0 company, SecondOpinion.com for example, where patients, having obtained electronic copies of their medical imaging data (X-rays, MRIs, etc.) post the information to the Internet community, appealing to the collective intelligence to seek whatever experienced or inexperienced opinions can be obtained, Wikinomics-style. The SecondOpinion.com community members interpreting the data would probably be in four groups, doctors and medical students, information experts interested in applying their pattern-matching models to novel data sets, other patients with similar conditions and those without any medical expertise.

The patients or site users would post their data anonymously via web handle, entering information that could include current prescriptions, full histories and eventually DNA scans. MyMedicalRecords.com could become the primary repository of personal electronic medical records, a universal human health database; patients could give new doctors their handle to review and add to their history.

This opt-in patient-driven rather than physician, insurance or medical-system driven mechanism promotes progress toward effective solutions while sidestepping onerous HIPAA and legal, ethical and privacy issues. Those that feel uncomfortable need not participate. A successful example of opt-in handle-anonymized personal data posting exists at Prosper, where 440,000 loan-seekers have agreed to have their credit histories posted publicly.

Another positioning of the concept is the serious video game, InterpretMyXray.com, where players (medical students and the general public) could go through a learning module and then be rewarded for correct diagnoses. The most accurate and top reputationed Xray interpreters might not be medically trained professionals, or perhaps even human.

The quality of the interpreted results would be interesting to see, the assumption is that many eyes, other skilled professionals and the wisdom of crowds might spot something important or bring a consistency of interpretation. Of course SecondOpinion.com and InterpretMyXray.com would not immediately replace traditional medicine but supplement it as a second opinion resource and mechanism for patient education.

Wikinomics Ideagoras

There are many great perspective-shifting points in Wikinomics, a 2006 book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.

One of the most interesting ideas is how organizations (companies, teams, groups, institutions, etc.) are opening beyond their traditional boundaries to solicit external contributions to their problems and challenges. Consumer products behemoth Proctor & Gamble, for example, currently sources 35% of new product and service ideas externally from participative global R&D communities such as InnoCentive where scientists solve R&D problems for cash rewards.

Ideagoras
Wikinomics refers to online ideas marketplaces like InnoCentive as ideagoras. Other examples of global ideas, R&D and project communities in life sciences and technology include NineSigma, InnovationXchange Network, Eureka Medical, YourEncore, Innovation Relay Centres and TopCoder.

Ideagoras give a huge boost to efficiency in at least two primary ways:

1) Multidisciplinary approaches accelerate advance of human progress
Ideagoras expose challenges to participants from both within the field and across many other fields allowing infinite creativity to be applied. In the gold mining example in Wikinomics, a plethora of diverse solutions using applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, organic solutions to inorganic problems, etc. were received, 50% of which were completely new ideas and over 80% of which were useful.

Ideagoras allow a wildly diverse and large group of participants to apply their special tools and approaches to problems. In this saturation of approaches, a fuller solution set of possible answers is quickly obtained and the pace of the Earth's meme encephalization, the increasing interconnectedness of human minds extending and implementing knowledge and information, is quickened.

2) More effective use of human capital - mindset of abundance
Ideagoras allow human capital to be more effectively utilized both inside and outside the organization. Internally, just as companies may be using only 10% of their patented IP, they are most assuredly also underutilizing their staff in terms of project fit vs. skills and interests. Instead of being assigned to projects, staff members could self-select projects of value and interest by participating in remunerative ideagoras or open-source practice communities as in the software example.

The new abundance of external human capital resources promotes the corporate mentality that a land grab to get the best people on staff is no longer required, just the need to provide the best project incentives. An entity's workforce can extend way beyond any salaried employees, to those employed elsewhere and others. Ideagoras provide a tremendous opportunity for retired or underemployed participants, such as women, to find activities where they can make a useful contribution.

Pace of Encephalization

Humans have so much in their brains and so little shared outside. This has to change for true intelligence and species advancement and there is a great opportunity in developing tools to facilitate this.

1) Communication and interaction are currently limited by the mindset of the individual

Human interaction is fragile and conditions have to arrive at some optimum before meaningful communication can take place. A physical presence is generally though increasingly less required. Certain mixes of other people must be there or not be there and trust which generally must be developed over time must be present.

Only the few people in close proximity circles to others [may] have some level of understanding of what is in human minds. Peers, those that share similar ideas and values, may have a deeper but still sparse knowledge.

2) Communication and interaction are currently limited by language as the dominant tool

Communication is necessarily governed by the narrowband of language. Language was certainly an amazing evolutionary advance when it arose but it is time for new communication tools. Language is essentially a few pithy comments trickling out of multi-dimensional plane of existence or thinking on a topic. Other options to language that would allow the permissioned knowing of value systems, beliefs and history would contribute to enriched communications. Mechanisms for sharing clusters of thought rather than individual ideas would also be a start.

Tools
Two types of additional tools are needed: more tools for creating and sharing content and better tools for making the content meaningful. Content has proliferated but step function increases are coming. Humans will be creating and sharing more and more personal content (ideas, creative endeavors, personal life details, how-tos, resources, etc.) on the Internet via blogs, video blogs, tumblelogs, lifeblogging, interactive lifecasting, twittering, FaceBook, LinkedIn and other new methods. Aggregation, summarization and abstraction tools (like meta tag clouds and jaiku-style diverse feed aggregation) will be increasingly important to mark content relevancy and make it findable and interactable.

Just like businesses are wikinomically learning that they should not have boundaries at the edge of their properties, employees and ideas, individuals will hopefully start to realize the great benefits of extending their personal content boundaries.