Tom Ferguson, _Health Online_, Addison-Wesley, 1996

         DrTomHO@aol.com

In the Information Age, the *consumer* is the primary
provider, screening for information in the context of
community.  Individuals look to self-care, friends and
family, and self-help networks.  Then they look to
professionals as facilitators, professionals as partners,
and only finally, to professionals as authorities. 
Industrial Age Medicine, where self-care is discouraged, not
recognized, and primary, secondary, tertiary care is
encouraged, is contrasted with Information Age Healthcare. 
p 275 ff

     The health consumer of the twenty-first century will
     play a more active role than the passive patient of the
     past.  This change will be so dramatic that it may not
     be long until the very term "patient" falls out of use. 
     In one Texas clinic, staffers have moved from calling
     their customers *patients* to *consumers* to *clients*
     to just plain *people*.  They are now considering an
     even further step to calling the customer "*boss*."  p
     286