The "Internet Domain for Healthcare" has announced that they have released thousands of "premium" dotMD domain names that were previously (presumably) in the hands of speculators. Their release also notes that they are "under new management" that includes several of its original founders.
I still have a fundamental problem with the idea that the individual professional will place a higher premium on being identified with their "name" than with being identified with the more traditional associations or organizations that they have historically gathered under. For instance, it doesn't strike me that the legal eagles over at SAMSF are going to ditch lawyername@skadden.com in favor of lawyername@skadden.law.pro any faster than Joe Surgeon is going to open himself up to a slew of questions from "do-it-yourselfers" by going public with a professional email address.
While the obvious answer is that these registries are going to first concentrate on marketing to associations and organizations such as hospitals, this doesn't address the reality that the individual is where the money is. And if the doctors don't get online with dotMD, then the adoption of these vanity domains is going to be severely limited. And as Google proves, there are still great options in many more concise namespaces...
Which brings me to my final question - Why? I posit that individuals would rather identify with domain names that represent actual community rather than go it alone and use their own moniker - even if that means building their own community.