Our doctor makes housecalls

Reason # 6,384,289,121 to work at Microsoft: our healthcare includes free home visits by a doctor. We tried this today when my daughter had a scrape that seemed infected.  One call to a special 24-hour number and an hour later a doctor was at our house. It almost felt like Little House on the Prairie, only instead of a horse-drawn carriage he came in an SUV.  Yes, he did have a satchel with a whole bunch of medical items. After looking her over, he wrote a prescription and was on his way.  For kids this is way nicer than an office visit, which can be pretty scary, especially if you go at a time when there are other patients around with serious conditions. And no need to worry about catching some other disease in the waiting room.

Speaking of healthcare, Bill Crounse, M.D. is Worldwide Health Director (and active blogger and podcaster) in the Health and Life Sciences group at Microsoft. He's also a fan of speech recognition, which could help with the dispatching of doctors.  The physician who visited my house today coordinates with the other 3 doctors who are on-call today, deciding manually who will go to which patient next.  It would be much more efficient if a Unified Communications server could keep track of locations and schedules, assigning new destinations via phone while the doctor is still on the road.