From Jay Mason: "Re: HIMSS. Thanks for the great event at HIMSS. I really enjoyed it. I have a question for you. Do you know who the largest ASP ambulatory practice management company is?" You’re welcome – thanks for coming. And, perhaps this is a trick question: the largest company, or the largest number of installed ASP clients? I know eCW has lots of ASP customers. athena’s are all ASP. I really don’t know, but I bet someone does and will tell me.
From HIMSS Road Warrior: "Re: HIMSS. You should probably have some form of HIMSS awards – best booth, worst booth, etc. I thought the McKesson booth was ridiculous. I have to imagine McKesson customers are wondering why they spend millions on a booth but struggle delivering a nice product. I found myself attracted to the smaller, more approachable booths. Picis was nice, knowledgeable people and had some good customer presentations. Epic was non-impressive as well as Oracle. PS – I saw many people with HIStalk stuff." Now that I’ve had a day to think about it, I’ll go with MCK for the worst booth; Cerner for the best big booth but, since they were on a different tangent, an honorable mention to Siemens; and Medicity for best overall for being innovative and well designed without being gaudy, although it’s tough to compare, especially when you know you didn’t see them all (I missed Picis, somehow). Wonder what they do with the retired ones? Sell them cheap to third world HIT vendors? Cannibalize them for parts? Set them up in a special HIMSS Boat Show Simulation Room to have the glad-handers practice their smiles and small talk and Olympic badge-swiping?
I was happy to see all the HIStalk stuff, though I really couldn’t comprehend it all. As I was watching people at the Mr. HIStalk Shoe Shine in the Red Hat booth, I wanted to have a dialog with the shinees: Do you know what HIStalk is about? Are you disappointed by the real me because I’m not what you expected? Does it seem strange that my name’s on a shoe shine?
From Neal’s Pizza Guy: "Re: UK. Don Trigg to be named Cerner’s General Manager for UK and Ireland." I e-mailed congrats (with a question mark) to Don and he didn’t reply, so either he was heading out of town or your rumor is true and he can’t confirm it yet.
Happy leap year. It’s good to be home, although I’m always kind of depressed after HIMSS for some reason. I always feel like such a loser when seeing other people out there doing cool stuff (especially the young ones).
I put a new poll to your right about Cerner’s decision to drop out of the HIMSS09 exhibits. Good idea or bad? You know where I stand.
Matt, the founder of CME Networks, e-mailed after reading one of our HIMSS posts, so here’s a little plug.
An ASHP survey whose results were released at HIMSS shows that only 11% of pharmacy systems are not integrated or interfaced to other systems. Bedside barcoding was reported in use by 23%, which sounds high based on what other surveys have found.
Smart marketing: Eclipsys announces that two of its Sunrise users have achieved HIMSS Analytics EMR Stage 6, joining fewer than a dozen hospitals: full physician documentation in at least one unit and radiology PACS (and including the lower stages: EMAR/barcoding, CPOE, clinical decision support, etc.)
The Methodist Hospital of Houston picks Picis for periop.
Big-time investment guru Carl Witonsky (who also happens to be a pretty good guy from my limited experience) is named to Dairyland’s board. I hadn’t kept up: last time I checked, he was running CliniComp, but now he’s on Sentillion’s board, too. I envy those big-picture money people, especially when I’m mired in day job minutiae after my "Cinderella at the ball" moment at HIMSS.
Students in India and China can take an online HL7 certification prep course for $100. And probably will.
Philips realigns its entire informatics business, although lost in the numbing flurry of buzzwords is an explanation of what they actually did.
QuadraMed has ported QCPR to Cache’. Like with RelayHealth, we scooped that a little in their HIStech Report.
Lacy Thomas, the former CEO of University Medical Center (NV) is accused of awarding uncontested hospital contracts to unqualified friends, among them former Cook County Hospital CIO Greg Boone. Boone got $50,400 for an 25-minute PowerPoint IT evaluation that caused employees to "chuckle and laugh" because it was recycled information he got from three employee interviews over two days (well, he’s not the only consultant to do that). A UMC IT director complained that Boone was unqualified, but boss CIO Doug Northcutt, sharing a fear of unemployment like many of his peers, told him to pipe down. Prosecutors say taxpayers lost $10 million because of Thomas’s shenanigans.
Kaiser says 10 hospitals are live on HealthConnect, with 23 to go. They finally admit a cost of $4 billion, although that could well be a low estimate.
Let’s give some more free PR to the urinal marketing people, just to annoy their competitors! Seal Shield announces a $40 dishwasher-safe mouse.I think they should run a HIMSS special and send a free banned urinal screen with every order, maybe framed like a gold record.
Elsevier begins marketing its clinical decision support applications that now include the former CPMRC of Eclipsys.
Medsphere announces an open source partnership with Tolven.
Former Medstat CEO Tim Murnane is named CEO of EVP/COO of NightHawk Radiology.
New York City claims its eClinicalWorks health records network will be the largest in the country, involving 200 doctors and 200,000 patients so far.
Inova Health signs an $8.3 million deal for Centricity EMR.
The analyst who upgraded athenahealth’s stock earlier this week says he’s hearing that eClinicalWorks may have hit the wall on its ability to scale up support and implementation. I looked back on my 2006 interview with Girish Kumar to see if he mentioned it, reminding me of what a good interview he did (check out his predictions and competitor evaluations). I know someone told me that in an interview about their company, so I’ll have to dig further.
E-mail me.
Sponsor Updates and Housekeeping
I’m thinking about shutting down the old HIStalk site at blog-city.com. Anybody have a reason I shouldn’t? I know some folks still read there, but I could send some reminders. It would make maintenance easier. I wouldn’t kill it since it’s got all the older articles, just not post to it.
I checked the HIStalk stats and February will set the record for most visits. Thanks for reading.
RelayHealth announces its Results Distribution Service, which we covered quite well, I think, in an HIStech Report interview. I should have asked Fake Inga to explain how it works.
AT&T will provide RFID asset tracking to Health First (FL).
Sage Software announces Intergy PM/EHR version 4.0.
Premise announces a partnership with Stryker Medical, contributing workflow and communications solutions to Stryker’s iBed project.
SXC Health Solutions will acquire National Medical Health Card Systems. Healthcare Growth Partners was strategic advisor to SXC.
NextGen’s EMR wins an MS-HUG innovation award in disease surveillance for its work with the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Art Vandelay on HealthVault
I took the plunge and played with HealthVault (HV). HV is not a PHR – it is a set of related health web services, schemas, and a storage service. Microsoft stated it is opening the toolkit and service. This follows its recent strategy for many of its other servers and portions of .NET. Codeplex will be the tool for sharing the open code.
The good: initial set of services, growing third party support for connected devices (BP cuffs, HgA1c monitors), cost of the service, and use of HL7’s CCD.
The acceptable: documentation, support forum, granularity of the security model, and basic service and XML schema testing.
The bad: no interactive debugging, error details, terminology services, overlaps in the data schema, and a confusing user interface. A number of issues exist with the Terminology services. This includes the lack of use of HITSP formats, the lack of terminology maps, and a lack of a consumer terminology engine. The confusing UI is less of an issue as Microsoft wants the partners’ developers to shield consumers from this layer of the tool.
The open questions: support responsibilities of Microsoft vs. partners, the number of hack attacks, and the intrusiveness of HV Search. HV Search is Microsoft’s sole revenue model.
Inga’s Update
It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am at the airport sitting at the gate. Don’t know how things will be Thursday but it took forever (more than an hour) to get my bag checked and go through security. It was ugly. Also ugly was my suitcase, which I could barely zip closed because of all the treasures I collected.
As I reflect on the last few days, it all has seemed a bit surreal. For example, walking by the booth for various sponsors and seeing the HIStalk signs prominently displayed – with my signature. And seeing various name tags and knowing that I have e-mailed or chatted with them. It hasn’t been that easy for me to keep my low profile, especially because my true nature is to go hug everyone!
If you are a sponsor, trust me, I stopped by. Michael, Dewey, Tina, Lauren, Don, Lynn and Bill – sorry I didn’t give you a hug. I did hug Tammi with AT&T because she helped me deliver the HIStalk signs to our sponsors.
Readers may not be aware of this, but it was also the first time Mr. H and I had met in person. He is just as funny and smart and warm-hearted as his posts suggest. Better really. He is not as gregarious as me, but I don’t think that surprised either one of us. We had fun sharing really gossip that was so juicy that it isn’t printable. I think he was amused and not surprised that I found attend several great after parties while he went to the hotel and made sure HIStalk got posted so that readers would get their fix.
Anyway, despite (or because) of all the fun and Internet access issues, I feel out of touch with real HIS news, so I look forward to catching up. Let us know your impressions of the meeting and make sure you have checked out the HISsies cartoon. The HIT Transition guys have asked what people have thought, so let us know.
E-mail Inga.
I’ll be heading out later today and I was ready for a sitting break, so I thought I’d be one of those ultra-trendy guys and blog right from the event (that fad kind of died out, didn’t it?)
From John: "Re: HIMSS. Great event last night and congrats to Healthia for making it happen. Quite sure they got a lot of good will out of that one. Hats off for stepping up to the plate and Mr. HIStalk, I bet you’ll have more than a couple of your sponsors approach you to do something next year. Google has a surprisingly small 10′x20′ booth where they are doing VERY limited demos (capabilities of solution) to hordes of people. Whenever I went by, crowds were 4-5 people deep. Not surprised by Cerner bowing out in 2009. Seen similar actions taken by other anchor vendors in other industries, but they don’t stay away for long, at least not until this industry consolidates a lot more and penetration in the market is deeper. Still a lot of opportunities in the market. BTW, got a wonderful Polaroid picture with a Miss Inga (she called herself Leah) over at the RelayHealth booth. It will go up on the wall back at the office. Thanks RelayHealth and Inga." That particular Fake Inga’s name really is Leah, actually, so maybe she wanted you!
From PTSD: "Re: HIMSS. Great reception with two free drinks! Tote bags are a nice touch and at least have two handles and could be put over your shoulder (more manly color next year? 85% of vendors use blue in their logo/marketing). Hotter babes at the reception than in the booths! Great finger foods, although anything with conch in it scares me. We did need some extra tables to put empties on and the back of the room could have used a bag check person. Most frequent comment; ‘One man, shooting straight, made all of this happen.’ Then of course Jonathan broke out with his digital balls comment… Urinal Marketing, absolute genius as I had something to talk about to fellow urinal users (not that I normally do that). People (guys) were talking about it in the show room. Google is here, but states they are consumer oriented… trying to get buy in from HIS? Most booths are here for current clients and to get name recognition so that when people bring a vendor to their IS departments attention, hopefully they have at least seen the logo and know that the vendor was at HIMSS. Cool toys, T-Shirt that says ‘Why does my nose run,’ bouncy balls that light up (my two year old will love that) and a tool with Phillips and flat head screw drivers. Also, where do you get the light up lanyards? I’m glad you liked the totes – I may need to print your comments to present to Mrs. HIStalk when she comes after me with the Visa bill wondering why some company she never heard of charged us $1,000 (that gets you 400 of the tote bags, in case you were wondering). I liked the conch fritters, although the crab cakes were amazing (lots of spice and heat, surprisingly, which I like). I saw the light-up lanyard people, but I forget who it was. Urinal marketing: genius, but not so much that I’d strike up a conversation in there (plus, how will they market to the ladies?)
From FOSSer: "Re: FOSS. As I am not attending HIMSS, could you comment on any FOSS type of exhibits at HIMSS and the reception of FOSS solutions within healthcare?" I don’t follow that area much, but it seemed to me it definitely is picking up. Red Hat had good crowds (the Mr. HIStalk shoeshine chick was cute today, by the way) the two commercialized flavors of VistA were there, and Misys had the open source EMR and integration engine in their booth. I’m sure there were more examples in the sessions. If anyone wants to report, feel free.
From Bobby Orr: "Re: Cerner. I’m disappointed in your ability to be swayed by the Cerner marketing machine. I expected better. You let them post this nice HR message when they canned experienced people for more college students. And now the bravo to them for cutting costs by not spending money at HIMSS. As mentioned the other day on your site, I agreed the Cerner Health Conference (CHC) is a great educational event for their clients each year but understand this move is very simple. Stock not doing well equals cut costs and not spend on HIMSS because it’s not winning us extra business. Simple business decisions." I posted their HR response to their layoffs for one reason: it lets you judge for yourself what position you take. It was spin, sure, but at least you could decide for yourself. I would be surprised that their decision to not exhibit was based on money – a 3.5 billion market cap company can afford a nice HIMSS booth. My understanding (reading between the lines a bit) was that they were still prepared to participate in HIMSS in a very financially significant way, but in a different format that was more focused on education. I think they’ve come to the conclusion that the exhibit is formatted for hard selling, but the market is ready to move away from that (and if they save money, that makes it even more attractive.) Some companies exhibit only because they know how quickly the competition will spread rumors if they don’t (like when SMS pulled out years ago). Fear is the wrong reason to spend all that money that could be better used for R&D.
From Watcher: "Re: Cerner. Recall that SMS dropped out the year before they ended up selling. Charlie McCall told me at the time that he envied their ability to do that as he never saw the value of the show. McKesson, otoh, had so much neon I wonder if they’re contemplating spinning out provider technologies." That blue was painful. Everybody else has moved to light woods, soothing shades of green, and rounded edges like Danish furniture and suddenly here’s this monstrosity shouting, "I’M A MASSIVE WALL OF BLUE, DAMMIT, SO GET IN HERE AND BUY STUFF." I might rank it as the worst booth of the conference, especially given its footprint, although Epic’s was sure looking long in the tooth.
From Faith Popov: "Re: HIMSS. The Healthia shindig was great. The cartoon was cool. I went to the RelayHealth booth before the show for an ‘I’m not Inga’ button, but they were all out. I guess they were a hit!I had to laugh about the automatic soap … I noticed that too, and thought it was weird! Tip: There was a vendor in the 7000 area that was giving out free tiny smoothies." I noticed the smoothies this morning. I also sat through the OnBase magician again – that guy’s a riot in a smarmy, smug Mr. HIStalk kind of way. Which makes me think just now how few live performers were in booths: no fake fisherman statue, no Richard Simmons, not many magicians. I think Inga and I should pimp ourselves out as marketing consultants because I bet we could pack ‘em in with some fresh booth ideas.
Reception pictures:
The dedicated Healthia folks working the reg desk, surrounded by HealthcareITJobs.com syringe pens and HIStalk tote bags. See how happy their people are?
Gwen and Eric. Eric works for Vitalize Consulting Solutions, which recently merged with Lucida. Mary Pat Fralick is still there, so if you’re still at the conference and want to say hi, they’re in Booth #1509.
Jonathan Bush accepting his HISsies awards. I like to think that a speaker’s gravitas and sincerity is enhanced by setting his beer right down on the podium as he speaks as if he will be quickly returning to it, don’t you agree? He was outstanding. He was on the networks this morning to talk athenahealth’s just-announced deal with Community Health Systems. HIMSS Watcher sent over a link to CNBC’s interview with him this morning and it’s a fun watch.
I saw some companies handing out their HIStech Report interviews. Cruise over and take a look. As a reminder, these are our usual interviews, but with questions written to help companies describe their product and its position in the market. They’re on a separate site because their purpose isn’t to be hard-hitting like the interviews here sometimes are, but rather to put a personal face on a product like you’d get talking to a company executive one on one.
Cool technology I saw #1: Design Clinicals.(Disclaimer: they’re a sponsor, but I cut them no slack for that and this is an area in which I have considerable expertise.) Now I’ll be honest: Dewey and Dasi are lovely and highly educated people, but I figured that, as a fairly new company, I’d have to paste on a phony smile while looking at some amateurish application (doctors sometimes think they’re technical as well as medical gods and do their own terrible design and programming). Their medication reconciliation tool, though, is elegant and system-independent. The design is very clean and easy to understand and their integration with the newest First DataBank tools is spot on. I interrupted them five minutes in and said, "You’re telling the wrong story on your site – you’ve got to get some Flash session demos up there because it’s a thousand times better than it sounds." They were already planning that. From a patient safety, physician, and patient point of view, this is the killer app for med rec as far as I’m concerned. I know how the under-the-covers stuff should work (like using NDC number vs. FDB RMID) and it passes the test. CPOE systems should have a user interface that’s as easy to follow and us as theirs. It ties into RelayHealth, I believe, to create a patient prescription profile from billing data in addition to other interface and manual entry. They just signed their fourth hospital yesterday. Most definitely worth a look if you’re struggling with med rec (which pretty much everyone is).
Cool technology I saw #2: Sonitor Technologies. (Disclaimer: they sponsor too, but I don’t care, although I only went through a quick demo). Their deal: ultrasound locators. Remember the story of how Post-Its came about because 3M had some crappy glue that wouldn’t stick well? Sonitor’s stuff works because it has a seeming shortcoming over RFID for locating objects: its signal can’t penetrate walls. What that means: it can locate objects down to the sub-room level. In the demo, they have a fake patient fall that triggers an alarm because the sensor detects movement away from the bed. You can watch in real time on a monitor as the booth people walk around while wearing their wristbands. They’re suggesting many uses: documenting that caregivers really did check on the patient every so often (and to bill for that) was an example. They’ve also got it set up for proximity-based PC security using the PC’s microphone to read the ultrasound from your tagged badge: when you walk up, it logs you on,and when you walk away, it logs you off. Pretty darned cool.
Cool technology I saw #3: Covisint. I stopped by because they announced a health information exchange deal with AT&T that will cover all of Tennessee. It’s a portal application that can be distributed by IPAs, hospitals, or larger groups. I can’t really describe it well, but it can tap into lots of systems (like EMRs and payor systems), has context to synch up separate apps, can plug in all kinds of widgets and let the doctor personalize his or her own screen, offers secure communication and file sharing, and can handle fax-outs and barcoded fax-backs with indexing. I was kind of overwhelmed so I didn’t get it all, but it was a very slick, lightweight application that anybody could use without training. There’s a lot of technology under the covers for authentication and personalization. I asked the guy why a hospital couldn’t use it to tie its affiliated docs into their data, solving the never-ending problem of unshared allergy, eligibility, and demographic information. He said it could be used for that with no problem (I didn’t ask what it cost).
The ever-loyal Inga filed her report below from a HIMSS "Surf the Net" station (does anyone still say "The Net?") because her connectivity hasn’t been working. I’m sure she’ll have more to say later.
E-mail me.
Inga’s Update
I spent a good part of Tuesday walking the exhibits. I talked to vendors at many of the smaller booths (including some HIStalk sponsors such as The White Stone Group, Stratus, Sonitor) and found booth traffic heavy all over the place. I chatted with the eCinicalWorks folks and they told me that their agreement with Wal-Mart precludes them from talking much about the whole thing and they preferred their clients to make those sort of announcements. A comment that made a bit more sense was that they do no outbound marketing (no email, direct mail, advertising, etc.) because they have all the business they can handle via word of mouth. Based on the traffic I saw there, that could very well be true. They also mention they rarely lose customers – maybe only 5% ever leave.
I played with a couple of the small tablet PCs, including Fujitsus, Dells, and Motions. Fujitsu had the smallest device that weighed about 1-1/2 pounds or something unbelievable like that. Dell’s included touch screen capability that was very slick. And Motion’s was a sealed device for infection control and had a built in scanner and biometrics. So all different enough from another to prevent them from being "just another tablet."
Mr. H and I walked into the Sage Booth. We agreed they had the prettiest color booth. The sales guy was impressed that I knew of Medical Manager and Intergy and Peachtree. I was pleased I didn’t choke and forget the names…
I stopped by the dbMotion booth. Dr. Diamond was one of my first interviews for HIStalk and he was very funny. So I checked him and his crew out. They seemed quite busy showing the product to several big groups of people and Dr. Diamond was much cuter than the picture we had used.
I talked to the Relay Health Miss HIStalk and asked her if people had a clue was. She said many did (which was good). I told her who I was and that she was doing a good job being me, which I think she thought was funny (I don’t know if she believed me.)
E-mail Inga.
I’m on convention center wireless, writing from the lobby since my hotel’s connection is dysfunctional. So, I can be verbose again (lucky you, huh?)
From Joe Mayo: "Re: Sunquest. Does the new Sunquest have a booth and what are you hearing about their Radiology Product?" They do have a booth, which I would characterize as small but tasteful. They had a little theater with a good speaker line-up and seemed to be getting a few folks in to hear the talks. I chatted briefly and they seemed to be nice folks. I like their logo. I haven’t heard anything about rad since they announced they’d resurrect it (wisely).
From Lori Loveless: "Re: booths. I thought you were absolutely on target with your comments on the booths. As you said, the Cerner booth was right on with them giving homage to their clients and partners. I too thought Siemens was well done and very open, they even asked me to sit and watch one of their presentations … which I have to say was also nicely done. What about Google?" You know, I didn’t even notice Google’s booth. I think I saw it yesterday and they were along a wall. I heard nothing about it, so the buzz factor might be less than you’d expect. I did finally get into Microsoft’s and wasn’t impressed … the little snot who finally deigned to show me Azyxxi wasn’t very good – it just looked like Excel from what I saw.
From Sal A. Selleck: "Re: your sponsors. Just thought you may want to share with your sponsors that their sponsorship money is well spent. I have been looking for implementation assistance and hadn’t come up with anyone through the usual sources. I Googled for consultants and hit a large dead end. I turned to your web site and have submitted requests to Healthia, MedMatica, and ICG. Don’t know if it will work out, but they have a chance to get in the door at my firm through their sponsorship on your site. I enjoy reading BrevIT and your site when I have the time. BrevIT is excellent." I appreciate that, although now I’m feeling guilty that I couldn’t get a BrevIt done Sunday because of my connectivity problems. Mike’s a big-system CIO, by the way.
From Tony Llama: "Re: urinals. Glad you ran the info about Seal Shield. No good deed goes unpunished, though. Turns out a competitor read about the urinal screens in HIStalk and complained to show management, who made them remove them. I guess no more chuckling in the men’s room . . ." So here’s a shout out to the loser competitor who doesn’t appreciate guerilla marketing: check out Seal Shield’s site, which has videos on their products. They have keyboards, infection control kits, antibacterial mouse pads, and Meditech keyboard overlays. And urinal screens, if you’re in need.
From Michael K. Fox: "Re: party. Party was great. Jonathan Bush was amazing. I stayed till today just to come last night." Jonathan had a great time, too, and lest I be repetitive, it was an honor to have him there (along with all of you, of course). Interesting news today: one of the big-name investment analysts who was at the party last night upgraded ATHN stock this morning, causing it to jump 10% today (I’m not taking credit, just saying). Also, athena just now announced a big deal with 125-hospital Community Health Systems, who will replace its PM systems with athenaCollector.
Scott Shreeve, who I’m sitting here talking to in the lobby as I write this, did a first-person recap of the reception and has some details. I’m hoping we can do something next April in Chicago. I told Shawna from Healthia that the coolest part was how well attendees meshed – it’s not like most vendor events where all you have in common is that you all bought the same stuff, so you end up talking shop all night.
One more time: I have to thank Healthia for putting on the event last night. I’m sure they had lots of other things to do, but they spent a great deal of energy working on the reception. Thanks to the very nice folks from there who worked the registration desk. I came undercover and they made a good impression. I know Healthia might be hiring consultants and I’ve written before how well they seem to treat them, so if you’re looking for a gig, I’d seriously listen to what they have to say and not just because they sponsor.
Just a quick recap of who’s got what HIStalk stuff in the booths. Healthia #4560 may have tote bags left. Ribbons are at DB Technology #4442, IntraNexus, Inc. #1851, Novo Innovations #4128, RSM McGladrey, Inc. #4038, and Stratus Technologies #569. RelayHealth may have some, but I’m not sure there (Miss HIStalk as doing great there today, having Polaroids made with admiring men – those RelayHealth people are fun). You can’t imagine the thrill that the fam will get when you proudly walk through the door and stick a badge ribbon on them, so take 1 or 200. Red Hat has a cool shoe shine stand labeled "Let Mr. HIStalk Shine Your Shoes" or something like that.
Fred Trotter sent some comments about the open source movement of Misys. He’s actually at least mildly impressed, I think. They’ve got Tolven and OpenMRS in their interoperability demo and are giving exposure to the Mirth project (it’s an open source integration engine). If Fred approves, I do too. I had serious doubts about their intentions, but they may be serious.
I didn’t comment on Monday’s opening events. HIMSS did a really cool movie that wove songs from previous decades into HIT-related events. They had a live band that was pretty good, kind of a white bread "we’re moonlighting from our Disney day jobs" feel. Somebody had written a song called "It’s Our Time" or something like that, which was pretty good for the first couple of verses, uninteresting for the next several, and annoying for the next 50 or whatever it was (if the singer hadn’t been a good-looking female, it would have been as skull-pounding as "It’s a Small World.") Plus, they played again as everyone left, which they did rather quickly given the alternative. I never have a clue what value flag people add, so when all the painted-on gray suited people ran in with nondescript flags and waved them around, I was more puzzled than anything else. Bill Frist was the keynote and did a pretty good job, at least as well as possible given that you’re pitching cutting healthcare costs and helping the poor when your multi-million dollar mother lode came from running for-profit hospitals. I’d give him a B, boosting his score a little because he obviously personalized his talk (some speakers don’t) and did is own sometimes amateurish PowerPoints, which I found endearing. So, overall, is it really our time? That might be a stretch.
The HIT Transition Group guys wrote about the HISsies cartoon and included some back story for the noobs. They had already tripled their server capacity, but the incoming hits choked it, so they had to add a mirror. It was a big hit.
Confirmed: Cerner will not exhibit at HIMSS09. They believe that the future is all about customer experience and outcomes, not the "boat show" atmosphere that Jonathan Bush observed. They expressed interest in changing their participation to provide more education and customer involvement (I’ve been a little bit involved in their planning, for which I’d say kudos to them for asking my opinion as a proxy for all of you). For reasons I was asked not to mention, that won’t happen despite their best efforts. Bravo to them. The industry has matured past the Neon Gulch point of picturing yourself behind the wheel of the latest software wizardry, giving away Hummers, and even my much-beloved booth babes. Here’s a prediction: other vendors will follow Cerner’s lead, either because they support the concept or because they don’t see the value of spending big exhibit bucks and now have a way to save face in following the market leader in opting out. I have fun with Cerner and call them out with they screw up, but they get it. They’ve broken new ground the last few years in how they handled their exhibit and now they’ll make the biggest leap of all by abandoning the concept. Did I already say bravo to them?
Speaking of which, I’ve got some broad conclusions about the industry from what I saw and heard at HIMSS. I’ll write that up when I get time, but the teaser is that I think existing provider backlog, capital constraints, and declining revenues will hurt sales for the foreseeable future (and I’ve got some facts to back that up). I’ve theorized who will win and who will lose in that scenario, which I’ve validated with a few CEOs while I was here, and how the industry change as the rising slope levels off. There’s no killer app coming that I can see, so it’s time to digest what’s been bought. More to come.
Recommended exhibit to visit: the Department of Military Health. If you need a reality check from all the glitz, have a soldier in uniform demo the AHLTA-Mobile and AHLTA-Theater systems for wounded troops, calmly explaining that bullet wounds also usually involve thermal injuries from the friction-induced heat as the bullet pierces your skin.
Booth trend: Wii games as simulators. And: some fruit and water as snacks instead of the usually unhealthy stuff handed out at a health-related convention.
Odd bathroom factoid other than Seal Shield’s strainers: the convention center soap dispense is motion-activated, but the faucet requires pressing. Strange.
Best session of the conference so far: Deborah Peel on privacy. She is just amazingly rational, persuasive, and downright charming and self-effacing. I started out months ago calling her a flake, but I’m now a big fan. She mentioned that her group is starting a privacy certification process, with Microsoft’s HealthVault and eMDs being the first. She’s also lobbying to set privacy standards for e-prescribing. The industry probably doesn’t agree with her on all counts, but I figure it’s like politics: even if they meet in the middle, she’ll have done great work.
A few more booth observations: McKesson was really ugly blue with a disruptive traffic pattern, but it was big. Medsphere was dead. Misys had a cool booth. Abreon had a tiny one set up like a pet adoption center, with stuff animals (dogs) in cages. My favorite geek booth was SupCam or something like that, way over on one end, with a tiny DVD-quality camcorder that can stream over the web for $298. The guy said he was doing big business.
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Inga’s Update
Tuesday a.m. – I got up early and headed to the convention center in hopes of finding an Internet connection that worked. How nice to have free and fast Internet! It is pretty peaceful here at 7:30 a.m. I am enjoying overhearing a vendor at the next table make a pitch to a couple folks. Commerce at work!
I spent Monday afternoon walking the floor. Perhaps I should have taken the advice from my new friend Suzanne with Active Data Services (booth 3787) who advised me to wear my walking shoes rather than the more fashionable high heels.
Here are a few fun booths and people I encountered yesterday.
McKesson used their Enterprise Visibility system to display the diagram of their 110×110 foot booth. Cool way to show off their technology. Also walking through the McKesson booth, I saw someone wearing a “I’m Miss HIStalk” ribbon, which made me smile.
Every time I walked by the Motion Computing booth, people were three deep checking out their tablet presentations. Microsoft was the same way – I didn’t even try to get into the booth because it was so crazy busy.
VasTech (booth 1543) offered me a margarita early in the afternoon (I declined) but maybe I will go back today. Drank some good Starbucks at Allscripts (5145) instead followed by a fresh warm cookie from Wayport.
Perot had a fun set-up where people could pick up a paintbrush and brush a few strokes on a painting. Don’t know if there was sort of correlation with their marketing theme, but I liked it.
Red Hat is offering free shoe shines from “Mr. HISTalk.” Maybe I’ll stop by there today. And of course I saw the imposter Inga at Relay Health (who was looking lovely).
I asked both the folks in the Misys booth and Allscripts about the buyout rumor. Either it isn’t true or nobody at that level has a clue.
My favorite trinkets so far were my pig and frog from the White Stone Group, the Magic 8 ball from Modern Healthcare, and the wide variety of thumb drives. I hear that Microsoft has the biggest drives by the way – the 1GB variety.
Also worth a visit is the Compuware booth, where there is a real race car Corvette. If you like, you can take your picture with a beautiful young thing, or, a studly race car driver like I did.
I also managed to figure out what vendors had the softest and most convenient couches (Microsoft and Healthia were at least a couple I tried out).
So, on to the reception. Gosh I had a fun time! Thank you Healthia for throwing a great party!
I enjoyed overhearing various conversations, especially the ones involving speculation on who Mr. H and Inga might be. I was amused how many people thought Inga might be a man! Do they think my shoe fetish isn’t for real? Real men don’t pay too much attention to shoes, do they?
The best dressed guy was Scott Shreeve, who was adorable! He had the coolest shirt (kind of retro) and some very happening shoes (hmm … maybe HE is Inga.) Plus, he is as cute as can be.
Gwen Darling was one of the lovely blondes in the black dresses last night. Definitely on the best dressed list. There was also a younger lady in a white dress with red shoes. I didn’t see her name, but she had it working! She was with a lovely lady in a short black dress with a bow in the back and black shoes – quite a nice ensemble, too.
Of course there was Jonathan Bush, who simply stole my heart. Mr. H had said he was pretty funny and engaging, but I wasn’t prepared for this boyishly handsome ADD-type! He complimented Mr. H on the intelligence and honesty he has brought to the industry and recognized his leadership. Meanwhile he had us laughing with his “boat show” analogy and “digital balls” comments. If athenahealth has a speed boat in their booth next year, note that you read the prediction here first.
So possibly the funniest part of the evening for me was realizing that the gorgeous blond wearing the “Kiss Me I’m Inga” sash was pregnant! I surveyed a few folks and the consensus was that, in spite of her beauty and perfect looking backside, she was a member of the Angelina Jolie baby bump club. Mr. H swears he didn’t notice (men!) but I think he had the whole thing planned and was really trying to play some very funny joke. For the record, this Inga is not in the family way.
I am heading to the other end of the exhibit hall today – those poor guys in the 7000 booths.
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From Larry Tate: “Re: the reception. Tim, Inga, Shawna, and the whole Healthia team: Thank you so much for a lovely evening! It was nice to rub elbows with the movers and the shakers. The food and drink choices were outstanding; the conversation was scintillating!” Thanks for coming. It was really cool seeing everybody enjoying each other’s company. I never know who reads, but looking around the room, I sure felt good about it (unless it was just a free drinks crowd, which is still OK).
From Quad Studer: “Re: marketing. Seal Shield in the 4000 aisle had submersible mice and keyboards, around $30. Simple idea given nosocomial infections and MRSA. They had an actual dishwasher in their booth which I thought was a pretty neat gimmick, but just saw something else even better. In the men’s room urinals they have placed blue plastic strainers (or whatever you call those things) that say ‘Your keyboard has 400 times more bacteria than this urinal – Seal Shield.’ Now THAT’s marketing. This came from someone I know, by the way, and not a shill. Ingenious and clever. We like. I think I saw that guy with a keyboard slung over his shoulder like a bandolero’s ammo belt.
From Andy: “Re: Cerner. Wondering if anyone has additional information on the rumor that Cerner is not going to attend the HIMSS conference next year? Looking at the booth strategy for next year, they are not included. That is going to leave a lot of C level executives looking around and wondering why thier vendor is not is attendance. Surely, it cannot simply be money?” I’ll probably get confirmation one way or another, but I doubt seriously it’s about money if they’re really not coming. Someone told me several vendors are considering opting out, and Cerner probably has the best reason in that they run an outstanding conference on their own, now right in KC. I’ll let you know what I hear, but I would like to encourage folks not to assume the worst if a vendor opts out of HIMSS since it may just not be a wise investment of their dollars, so they shouldn’t feel guilty for passing. Nobody signs contracts at HIMSS, nobody hears of a big vendor for the first time there, and not that many decision-makers leave with their minds made up. I’ve always said that exhibiting is more for the current customers than bagging new ones.
From XLT: “Re: offshoring. I was at Epic recently for training and sat next to a woman employed by Accenture who was from India. She was in-country for six months attending classes along with numerous other Indian Accenture employees. It seems that Accenture is creating an offshore capability for clinical system build.”
From Neal’s Pizza Guy: “Re: Cerner. Neal was in London last week and gave another bizarre town hall speech which none of the Cernerites could understand. At one point someone observed he’s started five different sentences and finished none of them.” I know he’s hard to listen to, but at least he’s the guy who started and runs the company. Polished hired guns with a holster full of Ivy League degrees and no soul would be much worse.
Some interesting comments were posted about the University Hospital downtime article in the newspaper. Someone who sounds like they know what happened said it was a connectivity issue outside the hospital’s control.
What a reception! If you came, thank you. If not, sorry you missed it because it was a blast. The room was packed and overflowing into the hall and the adjoining area. Two high-ranking folks who know me took me aside and said, “Do you know that this is the must-see event of the conference?” Another pointed out the line of big-name investment bankers rolling in. The food was outstanding (I’ve been living on Subway the last couple of days, so it was especially great to me, especially the crab cakes and carved turkey) and the beer was cold. But what was just completely gratifying to me was seeing all the conversation, the cards being exchanged, and the relaxation after a long day at HIMSS. My favorite moment: I had written a little recognition to the military members who had RSVPed, but everything beyond the first handful of words was drowned out in a roar of cheering and clapping and whistling for those serving. Thanks for that recognition – I wish more of them were there to hear it.
So, let’s talk HISsies. Those amazing guys at the Healthcare IT Transition Group made it into a cartoon, which is online on their Hitch-TV. They’re geniuses, for two reasons: they’re darned smart, but especially because they’ve figured out how to make a living having a blast working together. Their movie got a lot of laughs and applause in all the right places.
Spoiler: athenahealth and Jonathan Bush won 8 of the 18 awards. Jonathan was out guest speaker and what a guy he is! He showed up early stayed late, worked the room, and had a great time. I only wish I’d remembered to record his speech. My favorite quotes: “Digital Balls” (you had to be there) and “HIStalk is a network — that (the conference) is a boat show.” He hit some great topics in patient safety, the need to re-architect existing HIT platforms, and ribbed the Wall Streeters a little. What an utterly fun guy. The big TV network guys are always hounding him to death to go on national TV and here he spends his evening hanging out at some blogger’s reception. Thanks to him and to John Hallock, who just may be the best PR and strategy guy in the business. They brought some of the athenistas along and they were having fun and the CFO came over to chat, having no clue who I was. I’m proud that they could attend.
More thanks: Healthia for sponsoring the reception, handling tons of details, and staffing the event with Healthia team members (thanks especially to Shawna Schueller for overseeing the whole thing and Mike Tressler for handling the emcee duties). Thanks to Gwen Darling, who not only helped me personally with the event but who even outshone the models in good looks and grace. And, thanks to Miss HIStalk and Kiss Me, I’m Inga. Miss HIStalk will be in RelayHealth’s booth tomorrow, by the way.
AT&T announces that it will create a statewide information exchange in Tennessee.
Misys: nothing further heard on any Allscripts acquisition, so that sounds like a false alarm. Someone did confirm their offshoring of Level 1 support, although it’s going to an existing Misys operation in the Philippines instead of to India.
Link correction: the interview with SCI’s John Holton is here.
Gripe I heard today: the exhibitor badges aren’t blue any more, so salespeople were pitching to other exhibitors for a second until they realized.
Cool giveaway: MRV has a tiny key ring flashlight that’s powered by a hand crank. That will be Mrs. HIStalk’s very special gift when I get back home (that and a flash drive that someone was giving away since she asked me to track one of those down).
Acquisition announcement: Noteworthy Medical Systems will acquire MARS Medical.
Acquisition announcement: Eclipsys acquires budgeting software vendor EPSI.
Acquisition announcement: Medinotes acquires Bond Technologies. News only if you don’t read here since Dumbfounded told us two days ago.
Microsoft announces $3 million in available grants for add-ons to HealthVault.
There were a ton of other announcements, of course, most of them trivial. If one caught your eye as important, let me know since I haven’t had time to scour them carefully.
On with the booth reviews! Random notes about my first impressions follow. Let me know if you want me to look at specific ones.
eClinicalWorks: C. Not so great location, but they really don’t care since they’re selling like wildfire, including to Wal-Mart.
NextGen: didn’t get to see the game show, so since I was there for the girls, I’ll withhold judgment. Seemed pleasant.
Medicity – A. Very cool, chrome, two-story and modern. Had our HIStalk sign out, as did several vendors (we made them little color signs and Inga and I signed them).
Siemens – A. A monster light rack overhead, white and orange, huge, and an amazing theater.
Healthia – A. Few companies uses orange this year, so theirs stood out (most companies were into greens with light birch wood). Nice chairs. The folks were working the crowd well.
HMS – A. Last year’s diner theme with the sassy waitresses, my choice for Best Booth That Wasn’t County-Sized. It’s personal, the waitresses are fun, and it’s just cool.
Epic – C. Same old fireplace and stone.
Allscripts – B. a cool beaded curtain overhead and a coffee bar.
Medseek – B. Set up like a kitchen, kind of cool.
Cerner – A+. Best Booth That Was County Sized. It just said “All Together”, made up on close inspection of client hospital logos. No Cerner. No crowding. Huge expanse, some of it dedicated to simply providing seating for attendees well away from the salespeople. Absolute genius. The bigger and better the company, the less it has to shove its name and branding in your face. All those companies who thought they’d catch up this year by copying Cerner’s “customers doing the presentation” idea just got left sucking wind again.
EnovateIT: Know how I always say I can’t resist pawing their carts when I go buy? I watched passers-by doing it today. That Humanscale cart ought to be in an industrial design museum and their new med cart is an amazing shade of green. They chair they had out was a work of art. If you believe in value of esthestics and ergonomics, this is your Ferrari right here.
Sentillion – A. Had an upstairs, a coffee bar, the birch thing, and that green fish that I like.
TheraDoc: A. Popcorn. I didn’t make any other notes, but I must have liked something else about it since I’m not a big fan of popcorn.
Harris – A. Cool color-changing lights.
IntraNexus: A. Modern furniture, very open (giving them a nice double since I liked their bus wrapper best, too).
Eclipsys: A, but I had to think about it. Huge, pushed the salespeople to the perimeter. Great use of the KLAS CPOE adoption quadrant, although they should have put that on the main aisle and not the side.
3M – B.
Meditech – B. Nice design, good use of green, a little cramped.
Greenway – A. LED lights, excellent use of green (duh).
OnBase – A. Still one of my top two or three. The sports bar motif. Damned funny magician (and I usually hate those guys like clowns and mimes).
GE – B. Massive, all white, stark, cold.
QuadraMed – A. Open, sleek.
Microsoft – I have no idea because of the mob assembled in front of it. Right up there with Cisco in terms of having throngs.
RelayHealth – A, but their Miss HIStalk person scared the bejesus out of me. I was strolling by paying no attention whatsoever when I heard a loud “Are you Mr. HIStalk?” I froze and stammered, but that was just her stock question to get attendees to let her put a badge ribbon on. She was working the crowd very well. Nice booth, although security made me put my camera away when I took her picture.
Sunquest – B. Kind of cool, birch.
Beacon Partners – B+. Tropical, with shutters, plants, and comfy chairs.
Agfa – A, but boy did they and anybody in Aisle 7500 and up get screwed. Lots of non-glitzy displays (IHE, etc.) and clear around a wall full of restrooms. Traffic dropped hugely once you hit that barrier. Hope they got a lower rate because most everyone seemed to be turning back before those last aisles.
Cisco – A. Big crowd at the Unified Communications presentation and a cool InTouch robot around back.
AT&T – A. Cool telehealth camera and cart setup.
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