The only barriers are social, not technological. Consumer access to online medical information is growing rapidly. And therein lies the profound significance of this trend. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think the online medium will become a mass phenomenon in 5 years, or very soon thereafter. There's just no way, at present course and speed, that the online experience will become the ubiquitous social glue that television and movies are today.
Online resources are too hard to use and too expensive.
Because I don't think it's a linear world, and we're not going to continue at present course and speed. There's too much at stake and too many smart people seeking breakthroughs. Something that will replace keyboards. Something that will improve the resolution of displays by a couple of orders of magnitude. Something that will make navigation as intuitive as dialing grandma's phone number.