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!