From HIMSS 3/15/22

From Fault Line: “Re: HIMS22. Not sure about others, but for me, it was 45 minutes for cab at airport, then and outside and inside line to check in at hotel. Why did we miss traveling again?”

I added some reader comments to the ViVE attendee reactions from last week.

Tuesday’s commingled lines for health check, registration, and badge pickup snaked forever through the convention center with nobody from HIMSS directing folks where to line up. It’s a rare logistical slip-up by HIMSS that caused folks to be late for their sessions or for the 10:00 a.m. exhibit hall opening. Someone behind me said the lines were like Space Mountain, snaking down the hall and around corners. I guess that’s a good thing for HIMSS, which supposedly announced in-person attendance of 26,000 in the opening session that I didn’t attend.

I secretly want to be a bus driver as my next job. Every time I attend a HIMSS conference, I’m envious of their bouncy seats and horizontal steering wheels.

It felt like a pre-HIMSS20 conference, as the exhibit hall was packed with no extra spacing, masks were optional and therefore rarely seen, and the booths featured snacks, performers, and throngs of people. I’m sure the exhibitor and square footage count were down from their pre-pandemic prime, but the energy was excellent. It’s like a band that could either fill a 1,000-seat theater or half-fill an arena – the theater wins on vibe and excitement.

I threw smoked brisket away for the first time in paying $19 for a horrible lunch from the 4 Rivers Smokehouse exhibit hall stand. I love barbeque in nearly every form, but this was inedible. I should have known this from the non-existent line and their use of homey skillets to hold badly prepared smoked meat and macaroni and cheese. I threw half away and still felt queasy for hours after.

Know what we have? A truck. A big one. So there.

Salesforce had an impressive booth. I don’t really understood its point, but it was like summer camp for technology folks.

I tend to like booths that while phony, imitate life. So I was more than OK with 3M’s.

And Intelerad’s, which was like a homey restaurant booth with cushions.

My favorite booth was that of McKessson-owned CoverMy Meds. It was beside the booth of Redox. I feel some parental pull toward both companies because they sponsored HIStalk before anyone had heard of them and are now a big deal. I don’t usually call out favorite companies, but CoverMyMeds is a spectacular success story and co-founder Matt Scantland has impressed me both times I’ve interviewed him.

Nice summary, Experian Health.

Tax-advantaged provider, investor in for-profit-companies, and vendor? Correct answer — all of the above. Big booth.

Epic claims to have no marketing people, but someone’s doing an excellent job regardless of their title.

The Epic booth person told me that its Cheers CRM is just the same old products like MyChart overarched with a new name. I’m not sure if that’s correct, but they would know better than I.

The Vocera booth was quite busy.

Change Healthcare was taking headshot photos, which judging from the LinkedIn profiles of some attendees, are desperately needed.

The nicest exhibitors are always the folks from the Philippines, who not only provide more nurses to the US than any other country, they offer advantages for outsourcing health IT companies in various forms. I have never been to that country in my somewhat limited world travels, but they always make a positive impression at HIMSS conferences.

I liked Glooko’s remote patient monitoring platform for diabetes.

The folks at Pro Forma were cool in describing their promotional products. They agreed with me in wondering where the out-of-the-blue trend came from of exhibitor employees wearing outdoor-type vests, which I saw all over the hall. Other sartorial trends – light brown shoes with suits of any color, tennis shoes with suits, and semi-dress shoes worn without socks.

I took a look at HPE’s Zerto ransomware testing and recovery tool.

UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group) had a big booth, which I would guess at times was invaded by customers irate at its weeks-long cloud payroll system downtime that left hospitals in endless arguments with employees who weren’t paid correctly.

Palo Alto Networks gave me a nice overview of their system that monitors the network, finds and fixes performance problems, and evaluates the network problems of individual users such as those trying to participate in a Zoom call. They’re giving away a home appliance that does the same thing while looking cool.

I don’t know if I detected any particular HIMSS22 trend, but candidates would be cybersecurity and interoperability.

I saw people riding on Segways who were not G.O.B. Bluth.

Vendors – make your booth people disperse within the confines of your booth. It is off-putting to have them talking with each other in a closed circle that is unwelcome for prospects to penetrate.

Sphere is giving away ring lights for those who don’t have them for their Zoom or Teams sessions.

I went to a session in which Meditech and Google Health laid out their partnership to make Google Health’s Care Studio search tool available in Expanse. Meditech EVP/COO Helen Waters suggested that perhaps EHR vendors should focus on their platform and assume that companies like Google Health are amply equipped to overlay their products with consumer-grade UI. Meditech is looking for Care Studio to integrate its legacy products with Expanse.

Pondering – are booth reps playing with their phones because nobody is there, or is nobody there because booth reps are playing with their phones? I didn’t see nearly as much “expensive phone booth” time as in years past, so good job, folks.

I tried to use the HIMSS22 app, but it kept freezing on the title screen.

I skipped out early because my regrettably untested shoes weren’t up to the carpet-trodding task and therefore my back and legs were paying dearly for exhibit hall miles, but I’ll be back Wednesday. If you’ve seen something amazing that I should check out, let me know.