Three years ago while still very wet behind the ears on all things healthcare IT (HIT), I attended my first HIMSS conference. Having been to many conferences/trade shows before, some far larger than HIMSS, I was not intimated by the size, but I was quite intimated by a lack of the HIT vernacular (every industry has it’s own language) and frankly, I knew very few people. One of my mentors to the first HIMSS was Adrian Gropper, one of the founders of Amicas and currently co-founder and CTO of MedCommons.
Now, three years later I head to HIMSS with a comfortable knowledge of the HIT landscape, the significant incumbents and the interesting up-starts and some opinions on where this sector may be headed over the next several years. A primary objective for HIMSS’10 is to speak with many of these companies over the course of the next three days getting their views and perspectives, better understanding how they intend to meet future market needs and compare and constrast these views not only with my own, but among each other.
While I do not have high expectations for what the organizers of HIMSS will deliver and likewise, I will probably be less than impressed with the multitude of “meaningful use” (MU) messages by the vendors (not unlike last year when it was all about Stimulus funding and the HITECH Act), I am hoping that vendors who I speak to do adhere to the 5 Do’s & Don’ts, that the truly innovative break free of the MU crap and start speaking about true business value to drive adoption and that the CIOs don’t make bonehead statements like “…One lesson we learned in our deployment was to pay attention to workflow before implementing the solution…”
If all those things happen, than this year’s HIMSS will truly be a success.
Flying with fingers crossed and hope to see many of you there.
And if you are flying in to Atlanta, be sure to check out the fabulous exhibit of art (sculptures) from Zimbabwe. Truly spectacular (above photo).
John,
I’d be very interested in your take on the subject of Microsoft’s “New Microsoft Health Solution Connects Hospitals With Patients and Referring Physicians to Improve Coordination of Care” press release of today. (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/mar10/03-01MSMiamiPR.mspx).
The integration with HealthVault is to be expected, but the product seems to me more like an HIE than an EHR/PHR.
I’ve been casually investigating HealthVault and PHRs for the past few months as an example of personal “cloud-based” applications that are more significant (i.e., “meaningfully useful”) than FaceBook, Twitter, et al.
Cheers and have fun at HIMSS,
–rj
Hi Roger,
Actually received a pretty in-depth briefing with MSFT on the HealthVault Community Connector (HVCC) last week, prior to HIMSS. HVCC is basically a productization of MSFT’s work with New York Presbyterian and their roll-out of the Amalga-HealthVault linked myNYP.org patient portal (search the Chilmark site for a post we did on subject a while back). Thus, HVCC is a patient portal and maybe one could argue this is a consumer HIE, but it is a stretch.