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From HIMSS 3/7/13 — Inga’s Update

March 7, 2013 News 7 Comments

It’s Thursday morning and I am still in New Orleans and excited to see James Carville and Karl Rove. Dr. Mostashari was the keynote this morning and discussed the “why” of Meaningful Use (basically we need to capture the data, share the data, change processes…which in time will result in better outcomes) and strongly emphasized that MU is making impact and there is data to prove it. He knocked the media and “bloggers” a bit, as well as other naysayers who promote the “man bites dog” stories instead of the celebrating the evidence that adoption continues to climb. A couple other notes:

  • He expressed shock that so many vendors and providers don’t understand the final 2014 EHR standards
  • This year’s interoperability showcase was the “best ever” and involved “real exchange” and not just PowerPoints
  • Patients must be more involved in their care and providers must provide patients with their data
  • No one should make a profit holding patient data hostage

Mostashari is not only a terrific cheerleader for MU and its success to date, but he also clearly believes in the potential of HIT. I noticed Mr. H tweeted that hearing Farzad brings home the point that like it or not, we’re all in the public health business. He had a great message and it’s unfortunate his keynote was scheduled the day after most people had already left for home.

3-7-2013 10-59-11 AM

3-7-2013 11-35-00 AM

The crowd for Bill Clinton on Wednesday was insane. I walked in 30 minutes early, just as they were closing the doors and pushing everyone to the overflow section. I was able to stand fairly close to the front, but my body still aches from standing in one spot for two hours. Clinton was as smart and charming as I expected and his overall message was that we’ve got to fix healthcare in order to reign in costs; healthcare needs to be accessible to everyone;  pricing must be transparent; and, everyone needs to become engaged in his own health.

I spent most of the rest of the day Wednesday on the exhibit floor. I probably won’t have time to share all my impressions until tomorrow but I will mention a few things.

I asked someone very familiar with GE why GE was not part of the the CommonWell Alliance. Her impression: GE is traditionally very slow to move on anything, including getting their own products and software to talk.

Several vendors noted the heavy presence of venture capital folks looking at companies.

3-7-2013 3-24-19 PM

Loved the green tennis shoes at the Emdeon booth.

3-7-2013 3-25-17 PM  3-7-2013 3-26-42 PM

Iatric had quite a crowd of people watching their pool shark make a fancy shot while sharing a few details about the company’s data integration products and services. They had a monitor on the opposite side of the booth that was attracting almost as many people as the live view.

I noticed a big crowd of people watching demos of athenacollector.

3-7-2013 3-36-58 PM

Practice Fusion’s booth was quite sparse and they had a monitor displaying the number of patients seen using Practice Fusion’s EHR during HIMSS (436,000 and counting) and in 2013 (6.6+ million.)

The woman manning the CHADIS booth stopped me long enough to give me a concise description of their offering: a Web-based screening, diagnostic, and management system for pediatrics that offers online questionnaires for parents. Clinicians use the collected data to manage the care process more efficiently.

Lifepoint Informatics had two engaging guys standing on the edge of the booth (without phones) and greeting people as they walked by. I chatted with them a bit and they handed me two Starbucks cards. Just because. The Lifepoint guys mentioned they had more vendors stopping by and pitching their offerings than prospects asking about the company’s integration services.

3-7-2013 3-49-43 PM  3-7-2013 3-50-23 PM

I was intrigued by the artist in the Covisint booth and her mural. I wanted to hear what it was all about, but I couldn’t get anyone’s attention.

I took a stroll through the Mobile Health Knowledge Center, which was hopping. There seemed to be a mix of big name vendors as well as some I have never heard of.

3-7-2013 3-56-48 PM

There was a long line to tour the Intelligent Hospital, which included an OR, ER, and data center. If you didn’t need to get up close, you could view the set-up through the glass walls.

I chatted with the eClinicalWorks folks for a little bit and asked them why they were not part of the CommonWell announcement. The executive I spoke to didn’t know if they had been asked to participate, but he felt sure they would be willing to look at it if asked, even though they already connect to a variety of other systems. eClinicalWorks always has a modest booth compared to many of their competitors, but they seem to hold their own in terms of traffic.

As Mr. H has noted, way too many exhibitors were busy on their iPhones and iPads. However, I didn’t notice any phone use in a number of booths, including Hospira, Merge, Epic (except for a guy in a Hill-Rom shirt who apparently had walked across the aisle take his call in Epic’s booth rather than Hill-Rom’s), Caradigm, Microsoft, and dbtech.

3-7-2013 4-28-32 PM

About the only booth really busy the last couple hours Wednesday was OnBase, which was serving beer. Do these folks look tired or what?

I’ll have one last summary report tomorrow, as well as my impressions on the Carville/Rove session.

Inga large

E-mail Inga.



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Currently there are "7 comments" on this Article:

  1. I was not able tomake it to HIMSS this year. Thank you for the updates it’s like being there!

  2. I, too, was amazed at the number of people on iPhones and iPads. I was clearly marked as a CIO (gotta love that bright red ribbon you get), but I had to practically knock somebody down to ask a question. I walked around and through the Orion booth about four times (with a lot of sales/marketing people who were not otherwise engaged with customers) and finally had to wait patiently in front of one of those folks until they got off the phone. It was ridiculous.

  3. Re: Arkansas

    Your comments smell like a set up bro. Ive read here and listened to “experts” recommend vendor associates ignore the use of their iphones etc…. ehh…guess who we’re talking to people?

    You guessed it, people like you! So get off your high and might about something you know little about please.

    I used my phone, and answered it when the CEO of a public company called me to let me know he was running late for our meeting in our booth.

    Next thing Arkansas will write how nobody for (you fill in the company he’s assigned to criticize here) answers their freakin phones when he calls.

    Man up Arkansas … and buy something!

  4. Maybe if vendors didn’t outnumber customers by a 2:1 ratio or worse, folks would have something to do other than check email and try to be productive. Our booth, like most off the main track, was mainly visited by other vendors and consultants. We definitely had periods of time where the only folks stopping by the booth were pre-scheduled. All casual show traffic seems to have evaporated this year. Even large companies off the beaten track were complaining of very low customer attendance numbers. Other shows we literally have a runner grabbing water for people as we demo non-stop; HIMSS is a slog for anyone who isn’t one of the big-boy vendors with lots of points to land on the main strip.
    Its getting harder to justify paying big bucks to HIMSS when the dog fight for customers is a waste of time and resources.

  5. I was at the show, but still enjoy reading your highlights. GREAT job Inga. You help me fill in for all the areas that I didn’t get to. And- wowza- with a show floor that was 1 1/2 miles in length- there was quite a few places I didn’t get. THANKS again!

  6. I’m with Patty Cake. Not having attended (ever), but always supporting a HIMSS vendor from home, I love seeing the responses from attendees and other vendors about what was/wasn’t effective. I only wish there were more pictures so that I could get an even better sense of HIMSS. HIStalk is the best at pics and descriptions that I’ve found. So thanks Inga, Dr. Jayne and Mr. HIStalk!







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