Retiring baby boomers create opportunities for innovation.

and information technologies a re radically transforming e ve ry sector of our economy making this surge of innovation a defining characteristic of the last quarter century. Hi s t o ry may well consider the information re volution to be as important as the industrial re volution in its impact on the world. Now h e re is this truer than in the health care sector. For example, the Human Genome Project could not have been completed without computational and communications technologies that we now take for granted. This conve rgence of technology allows digitize d images to be sent routinely across the c o u n t ry for the purpose of diagnosis and patient treatment. Health care personnel rely on remote monitoring, computerize d patient re c o rds, personal digital assistants, and video-conferencing to track and care for patients located in the most re m o t e p a rts of the world. It is an amazing time to be alive. In 2011, only six years from now, the first wave of baby boomers will begin to re t i re. As they age, this large cohort will consume more and more health care services. Health policy experts are already trying to address and even anticipate the needed changes to the health care system by focusing on improving patient outcomes, reducing medical errors, contro l-