Medscape's RSS Feeds and Patterns of Transformation
Friday, I had a chance to have a talk with Steve Hoffman, VP, Product Management WebMD, Medscape. RSS is hardly used for syndicating medical news/articles, and I wanted to find out how Medscape chose to adopt this format especially since I think this represents the future of presenting medical information on smartphones.
I found out that Steve was the impetus for this project. His involvement with the blogging world allowed him to see how simply and efficiently this format works in syndicating blog content. He told me that he was blogging for a while before the management at Medscape knew about this. There was some concern at first, but eventually they accepted the concept. This illustrates that fact that within an organization often it is one person or a small group of individuals who can see an opportunity for adaptation with promising technologies.
The Medscape specifically markets to the 800,000+ practicing physicians in the US, with their practice management services. It's my contention, that within the next 1-2 years, this population will be using smartphones, partly based on the stories about their convenience and partly on the carriers pushing the use of their evolving data networks. One day will see the obsolescence of the alpha-numeric pager as these networks are optimized and supported by improved antenna systems within hospitals. Right now, RSS does not capture significant interest of these 800,000 physicians. And, it won't in the future unless there's more discussion and demonstration of its use in the clinical setting.
So, the question is how to give this open XML format a chance at becoming a transforming technology? It's not going to occur directly, but as with the discovery, acceptance and demand of smartphones in a grassroots manner, the information about its usefulness will move in a bottom-up fashion. (When the Treo 600 was initially released last October, it was said to be a "niche" product meant to serve the needs of a salesforce requiring access to enterprise apps. Because the dedicated user base of the previous Treo models who eagerly upgraded to the 600 published their satisfaction on the Web and by word of mouth (an old medium but still effective), the niche has dissolved and the 600 is achieving positioning analogous to Apple's iPod.)
With this rationale, I suggested to Steve that Medscape continue to develop its foresight, and make a determined effort to connect with the residents, the physicians-in-training, who work under the most demanding conditions, who need software tools to work as efficiently as possible, and who will eventually enter practice and will remember if they had benefited from Medscape's involvement will knowledge management. I also think that an international focus (which blogging allows) is necessary. Although it might not necessarily relate to your present market, including and supporting whomever is interested in your vision serves to build credibility and pervasiveness.
The Cluetrain meme presented this idea of companies establishing conversations with each and all potential customers as enabled by the Web. But changing practice patterns and work habits traditionally held by each niche group culture requires a more determined effort, made easier by the Web, with the ultimate goal of transformation. Anything less could mean that a good solution is replaced by some kluge which never underwent broadbased testing and validation.
7:23:34 AM 
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