A Unit of Trust Is Worth How Much These Days?

One theme dominated last night’s panel discussion at the DC Social Media Club event ‘Engaging the Health World Through Social Media.’ Trust  . . . with a capital T. Trust that your health data won’t be shared without your permission. Trust that online health information is true and accurate. Trust that any online counsel you receive comes from a real doctor or at least someone qualified to give the advice. Trust that the online health community you join is really populated by people who are who they claim to be. On it went.

It’s all completely valid. How can you trust online health information when Google pushes data to you based on a search engine optimization algorithm rather than medical information?

Back in the day when I started healthcare venture in the early 2000’s the holy grail of healthcare technology was electronic medical records. It’s now accepted wisdom that the technology for mass EMR’s is widely available. We have the bandwidth, storage capabilities, applications, and maybe now we have consensus from all stakeholders that EMR is a worthwhile national priority.

It’s not happening though, until we can solve the trust thing.

This got me thinking. We at 2i are not technologists so we have no ideas on how to actually solve the problem. On the other hand, no entrepreneurial technologist is likely to solve the problem without the expectation of getting paid. So how much is that one unit of intangible trust worth? How do you monetize it? Once monetized, how do you value it?

(Noticeably absent from the discussion last night, at least from my crass banker’s perspective, was any mention of revenue, profits, business models, paying the rent, etc. Actually the word ‘revenue” was used once in the discussion from a member of the audience. But this is the subject of another blog post).

Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer (yet) on how to monetize trust? If we did, we’d be on the slopes in Colorado rather than in our office beating the bushes. However, our next two podcasts can provide some insight into how two founders of internet-reliant companies they monetize the trust factor.

·         We’ll be interviewing Joel Selzer, Co-founder of Ozmosis, during the week of February 16. “The Trusted Physician’s Network,” Ozmosis is the professional application of a social network that enables verified physicians to exchange medical knowledge.

·         During the week of March 2, we’ll be interviewing Ric Fleisher (no relation to your blogger), Co-founder of Honesty Online, an internet-reliant company that provides a verified identity Credential that users can use and re-use wherever they interact or transact online.

Not to leave our readers empty handed, we do know how to value a unit of trust, which in our world would be a brand. This is an ongoing topic of future blogs, research, and podcasts.

As always, we welcome your insights  . . . .

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Filed Under Intangible Asset Valuation, Intangible Assets