Doctors estimate that the Half-Life of medical knowledge is about 5 years. In other words, half of what they tell you today is no longer true in 5 years. That isn’t because they are not telling you the truth, it is just that the knowledge in medicine is moving so fast that half of what is true today is found to not be true in 5 years.
This is a fairly universal calculation with the duration of the half life varying wildly depending on the subject, and how rapidly the knowledge base in that industry is moving. Reminds me of Moore’s law, where the number of transistors in a semiconductor will double every 2 years. The law quoted by Gordon Moore of Intel was originally a doubling of count every year but then was backed down to every 2 years after 10 years’ time.
With that said, the question is, what is the half life of knowledge in our industry, the data collection industry. Which includes some pretty rapidly evolving technologies like RFID. We recently released a YouTube video on the OCR capabilities of Zebra’s hand scanners, mobile computers, and fixed position scanners. The message in that video was that the answers to questions about OCR capabilities in those products 5 years ago are mostly incorrect now due to advances in the technology.
For sure things that we were telling customers that were not feasible with RFID 5 years ago, half of them are now possible due to advances in the technology. Label printing has not advanced as quickly. Barcode scanners for barcodes, certainly have a 10-year half-life of knowledge. 10 years ago, most scanners were still laser based.
But with all of that said, we feel that 5 years is about right for a half life of knowledge in our industry. That is why it is crucial for our team to keep up with the advances in technology. If we are going to continue to be trusted advisors to our customers, we need to not only speak only the truth, but we need to know what the truth is currently.
So, if you are looking for a technology partner who keeps up with the half-life of knowledge, visit us at www.emptechgroup.com to learn more.