As a society, we haven't even begun to apply the benefits of the digital age to two of our most nagging problem areas: education and health care. Both could be advanced at great cost savings if we could only break free of the past: the clinical model and the classroom model.

A project underway at Johns Hopkins illustrates some of the vast potential of applying I.T. to health care. The creation of a "virtual diagnostician" using artificial intelligence, combining the expertise of the very best diagnosticians in the world, including their intuitive senses, promises an online network and Web site that might one day be available to patients all over the world.

The outcome would be more accurate diagnoses of difficult medical emergencies as well as chronic diseases and disabilities. Second or even third opinions would be automatic. The costs of the diagnostic side of health care would be dramatically reduced.

A similar project at Rutgers University, funded in part by the CDC, is in the early stages of constructing an online program of preventive medicine, including alternative treatments such as acupuncture, radical life style changes, and less dependence on medication and surgery for the prevention of heart attacks and cancer. Again, more reliable outcomes at huge cost savings are in the wings. Whether the AMA will support such applications remains to be seen.

But what about education? Why are computer technologies so little used in the delivery of classroom teaching?

About a decade ago, I was approached by a recruiter from Phoenix University, the online virtual classroom folks, who were interested in having me deliver a course in basic advertising methodologies. They had heard good things from my students in such a class at Hayward State University, and I was intrigued. So I did some research into the virtual classroom.

If you've ever followed a course on ETV (Educational Television), you know the format; now imagine it online. Cutting-edge lectures and discussions are filmed and shown to online students. As the technology has improved, webcams make possible network-wide, online discussions in real time. Students anywhere can take the class, and if their schedules permit, participate in the discussions. If their participation is time-delayed, they can submit questions and challenges to fellow students and the teacher via e-mails or text messaging.

The chief advantage of the virtual classroom is that the quality of the instruction can be maintained at the highest level, since only the very best teachers are signed up to instruct the classes. All of the ordinary teaching tasks — from making assignments to recording attendance to giving and grading tests and written papers — can be automated or computer-assisted, and given consistently from one session to the next. Enthusiasm and motivation can be kept at an ideal state.

A wide application of virtual education to all levels of public schooling would save many billions of dollars in school construction and maintenance costs, teachers' salaries and benefits, and administrative expenses. A portion of those savings could go to insure that every student has a working laptop computer with city-wide wireless connectivity.

Critics will say that students need the interaction that the real classroom provides, but many school-aged children are already fascinated by computer games and online social networking, and are more motivated by these experiences than they are by many classroom teachers. At the very least, the virtual classroom should begin reaching out to the many school dropouts that the public school system produces now.

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