Dr. J.'s Jottings: Upgrading Workers' Comp & Disability Benefits Systems

60 Summits Project Diffuses Down Under

I'll be in Australia and New Zealand later this month, promoting the new work disability prevention model and teaching doctors clinical decision making in SAW/RTW. 

An article about the new model and The 60 Summits Project was published today in RTW Matters, an Australian based website.  There's a catchy little quote about the Emperor's New Clothes. 

RTW Matters kindly provided me with a link so you can read the article -- even if you don't subscribe.  Incidentally, the site is well worth exploring more fully.

http://www.rtwmatters.org/article/articleG.php?id=920&t=60-summits-project-hits-oz

Smiling,
Dr. J

The Value of Information in "The Information Age"

I'm sure as heck not an economist.  But because I run a business that offers internet-based training and continuing medical education, I've been thinking about the costs of developing educational materials, versus the social / economic impact of education, versus the prices being charged for it.   The plight of newspapers and magazines is also on the forefront.  Ruminating and thinking a bit more broadly, I suddenly saw that: 

1.  "They" are calling this post-industrial period in America the Information Age.  "They" say that the way that America will be able to compete is because of our superior information.  The new American worker is supposed to be the knowledge worker.

2.  At the same time, Americans are also demanding / asserting that knowledge and information should be free.

3.  The internet gives providers of free information -- who may have subsidized or unsustainable money-losing business models -- unlimited free access to a marketplace in which they compete with purveyors of paid information, thereby rendering them unsustainable too.  

Why doesn't this trio of facts mean that we have created a mechanism to eviscerate the US economy? 

Smiling wanly,
Dr. J
President
Webility Corporation
www.webility.md