While Barry and I were high school classmates near Berkeley in 1969, across the bay at UCSF my dad was using standardized data available for the first time in an electronic format to study the impact of drug-drug interactions on the Medi-Cal (California public assistance) population. That data was the product of a government program, and led to online patient drug profile review facilities commonly available to health professionals that have reduced deleterious drug interactions and the attendant suffering and expense. But well into the '70s, the computer time necessary to provide such service was too expensive to justify the benefit.



Currently, the World Wide Web Consortium sponsors a Health Care/Life Sciences project focussed on the standardization and eventual ultra-sophisticated application of health data, down to the genetic level (http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-hcls-dataset-20150514/). Such a 3WC group is probably capable of designing a worldwide health science and service utility which if fully realized could ultimately redefine the terms in which human welfare is framed, and in the U.S. profoundly challenge entrenched interests and key assumptions of mainstream economists (as they are all dragged off for organ harvesting while desperately squealing for their lobbyists...)



A new kind of non-profit 'sensors always on/health outcomes oriented consumer's union/buyer's club' might be required to bypass the systemic inefficiencies and rent seeking basic to the American capitalist health industry. The benefits and market-shaping power of organized, digitized, standardized and consolidated demand also might easily be generalized across other sectors of the economy.