Putting it Flatly

I just wrote a short email to a person associated with the Patient Navigator concept, summarizing what I thought about some efforts that Microsoft is making to become a player in the Healthcare arena.

I was impressed by the concept of Microsoft Amalga, which can integrate the display of data from multiple sources (though I tend to be wary of things like that after having seen the Candle computer systems integrated display of multiple data sources; it was multiple, but it certainly was much more primitive than I had in mind, and I suspect that in its first generations, Amalga might be, too). I was much less impressed with Microsoft Surface, because I couldn't see a use for it that was substantially better that what was done now. The closest was the idea that on one place, you could quickly see data from multiple locations all at once, and take them in with a single glance rather than having to look at multiple monitors or read multiple pieces of paper. That's nice, I thought, but, so what?

When I look at concepts like that, I find it very difficult to move beyond the basics to see what it could be. The reference I like to think of is the possibly apocryphal story of the person who, told of a proposal to put telephone lines in so that people in Maine could talk to people in Tennessee, replied, exasperated, "But what in the world would people in Maine have to say to people in Tennessee?" I know that when new tech appears, there has to be a certain amount of taking it on faith. There tends to be a fair amount of gee-whiz and then a miracle occurs and this is gonna be really useful, you bet, but, for me, I need more than that. I need to see how it solved one problem in a commanding way -- at least, in a way that was as effective as current methods and had the strong potential to do so much better with practice and application. Just saying how great it was going to be doesn't cut it for me. I know that sometimes, perhaps many times, solutions come out of the serendipitous joining of creations and concepts that didn't seem at all allied, solutions that the creators would never have imagined. Think, for example, of the famous origin of Post-It notes. But for me, if you want to be believable, you have to have a problem you're aiming at (even if the one you end up fixing isn't that one.) Gotta be real. Otherwise, I'll think, it's just some pricy gimmick -- like this.

To put it flatly.