Could this possibly be the first blog post from on board a commercial cross-Altantic flight? As if London and Lebanon weren't enough, Nicco and I are off to India for ten days. I'm writing this blog post while I'm flying 30,000 feet above the Atlantic ocean, using Lufthansa's new SkyNet®, wireless internet service. SkyNet ...wait a minute... it's actually called Flynet. I have to say, FlyNet is pretty freaking fast: I'm getting speeds approximating a slower DSL connection, around 300 kbps download. Fast enough to download a video while surfing the web and checking email!
But, enough techie stuff. There's actually a purpose to this whole trip, and a lot of it has to do with outsourcing. My, that's a bad word in certain circles. Before you jump to conclusions about it, let me say that we're actually interested in learning about healthcare outsourcing, especially related to one of our bigger projects, purpleocean.org. We've set up several meetings with major Indian healthcare groups and medical outsourcing technology firms, hoping to get a sense of what's ahead. Why? For starters, an open heart surgery that often costs US $40,000 costs about 1/10 that much in India, is just as good as the American kind, and is very often with Western-trained doctors.
Let me put it this way. You should totally pick up a copy of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.
I will keep you updated as our trip progresses, and hopefully, I'll get Nicco to post some cool pictures. Wish us luck!
