Ready or not, tech-enabled consumerism continues to morph the relationship between professionals and the consumers they serve. I've written before about both the move to on-line ratings services for health care professionals (RateMDs; RevolutionHealth; Vitals.com; DrScore.com; HealthGrades.com; MDNationwide.org; ConsumerHealthRatings.com; and Rehabio) and the on-line web sites that sell excess professional capacity by the minute (ETherapistsOnline; MyTherapyNet; WebAddictionTreatment.org; and AsktheInternetTherapist.com). These categories of health care marketing organizations represent something akin to American Idol and HOTELS.COM in the health and human market space. Well, the push of technology is taking this one step further—we now have the progeny of when eBay meets health care.

The eBay of health care may soon be PriceDoc.com. The company just received a U.S. patent on its soon-to-be-released system for on-line bidding on health services which will, according to their press release, make "PriceDoc.com the only online site where patients can "make an offer" for healthcare services with verified providers." The initial focus of PriceDoc is consumers who are uninsured, underinsured or seeking elective procedures with provider organizations and professionals who accept cash or credit card payments. (The service categories on their web site include dental, medical, vision, cosmetic, mental health, weight loss, allied health, and alternative health.)

You may think this type of purchasing model couldn't change the health care space. But don't forget eBay, founded in 1995 selling office equipment and plane tickets; had 250,000 transactions in 1996; and by January 1997 the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions. Bottom line? We can’t rule anything out when it comes to which tech trends will shape the sector. Stay tuned.

Gartner has recently released its analysis of social media, with five predictions for where it is headed (see “Gartner Reveals Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond”)—predictions that have implications for both organizational management and for marketing strategy in our field:

1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

My takeaways of the management implications of these developments:

1. Your organization will need social media presence (however limited) to be included in all of the business networking discussions in your market space.
2. In planning your organization's use of social media, it's important to focus on the solution and not the technology. Executives will need to press tech departments into accepting a solution-based approach to their work—and participating in the evolution of social media's role in your organization.
3. The smart phone user interface will soon become our standard computer interface—it's not just the hardware that is merging.
4. Process analysis in your organization will need to include the social media-based interactions between team members and with customers.

Stay tuned for more coverage on the social media impact on the health and human service field.

After November’s election results, I’m left wondering…was it a referendum on the President? Where were all those young Obama supporters? Is the GOP dead of its own internal bickering? That independents would within one year swing from Obama enthusiasts to backing decent-to-weak Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey is “simply astonishing,” writes The Wall Street Journal opinion editor.

I don't think it's so astonishing. But, it means accepting the fact that technology has made both political parties—as they currently operate—irrelevant. The world of Internet information; web-based political advocacy groups; and flash mobs (e.g. ‘tea party’ folks) has changed the political landscape. Political parties no longer have coherent platforms that mean anything to anyone and they don't have the ‘member control’ that allows them to mobilize voters. In the future, the winning candidate (and the winning party) will be one who can engage the independent voter around specific issues by using technology to build candidate-specific coalitions of specific voter and interest groups.

For health care reform, both parties are at risk. For the Democratic Party, they're going to need to realize that Americans are skeptical about the operation of the current 'public options' (Medicare, Medicaid, IHS, TRICARE, VA) and don't want to abandon their perceived personal ability to pick a health plan or a professional. Republicans are going to have to go beyond the 'party of no' and "Kill the Bill" rhetoric. Americans know they’re in danger of losing health insurance when they lose their jobs; that many health insurance company policies are nightmares; and that most of us are one serious disease away from bankruptcy. The party that ignores the 'middle view' on health care reform will pay the political consequences for whatever happens with health care.

I recently presented at a state behavioral health association meeting where, to put it mildly, the execs in the audience thought my five-year projections were a bit 'wild'. I heard many comments like, "That will happen eventually, but certainly not in five years…"

But even my view of the future of the health and human services field was given a 'big shock' by the remarks of Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando. Mr. Schmidt was asked to answer the question, "What will the Internet look like five years from now?" Here are a few of the trends he is working into the five-year strategic plan for Google:

• The next five years will outstrip the factor of ten that we now know as Moore's Law—computers’ capabilities will be doubled (speed, storage, reduced cost, etc.) in five years—and not ten
• Within five years, there will be widespread broadband access well above 100MB in performance—in other words, super-fast bandwidth for real time audio and video communication
• Distinctions between TV, radio, and the web will go away—facilitated in part by inexpensive, fast broadband access
• Real time user-generated information on the web will increase—also facilitated by inexpensive fast broadband access—and the will be including it in search results, and more critical, in ranking
• Web users will expect to jump from one application to another seamlessly (much like today's teenagers)—and will demand applications that permit this
• Five years from now the Internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.

What does it all mean for our field? I don't know yet, but our team at OPEN MINDS is working on the answer to that very question. Stay tuned.