What Food Should I Eat? What Medicine Should I Take?

"What Cereal Should I Eat?" is a light-hearted flowchart done by a blog called Eating The Road.

And while this particular chart is strictly for laughs, there's a serious potential healthcare point lurking in these schematics: One of these days, there will be cool and easy to use programs--as user-friendly as iPhone apps--for many if not most healthcare concerns. To nudge you about what to eat, what not eat, to remind you about taking your medicine, and so on. There are plenty of these products already on the market, but they aren't yet as ubiquitous, or as cool, as what can be found on, say iTunes. It'll happen, and when it does, we will be healthier.

To be fully effective, healthcare IT can't just be for doctors and hospitals, it will have to be there for patients. That's the lesson of the Internet; it doesn't really work all that well until it becomes the operating standard.