First – Dr Michael Legg, President of the Health Information Society of Australia provides a personal postcard from HIMSS.
Dear David,
Re: Postcard from Orlando
While sitting waiting for a plane home, I thought it might be therapeutic to share my thoughts with you on HIMSS-08 although the postcard should really have mouse ears for it to be an authentic item from this Disney built city.
As I sat with some 20,000 others in a very big room, the striking thing for me this HIMSS was the heart-felt respect and appreciation shown to the assembled health informaticians for their long, and acknowledged often volunteer, efforts to improve the way healthcare is provided. This was started by Bill Frist, the recently retired Leader of the Senate (a physician) but followed with support from the Secretary for Health (Michael Leavitt) who administers one quarter of all US Government spending, the Co-ordinator of Health IT (Robert Kolodner – who is accepted as a respected member of the community of health informaticians in his own right) and finished with the new Admiral Grace Hopper Award being presented to Michael Leavitt by the Deputy Secretary for Defence! It seems those in public life understand the separate domain of knowledge that is health informatics here and believe that work in the area is worthy of recognition.
The US is often criticised for its political regime, but there are many things that it has every right to be proud of and the openness and transparency of the process around their AHIC (American Health Information Community) is one of those. I took up the invitation along with around 50 others to join the 28th meeting of AHIC chaired by Secretary Leavitt and co-chaired by the Co-ordinator Robert Kolodner. The meeting was open to the public and simultaneously webcast. What a wonderful thing it was to hear the thinking behind the process to establish an independent entity ‘AHIC-2’ that will encompass the private sector and is being purpose-built to withstand inevitable changes in Administration.
The biggest and strongest conference theme from the land of the superlative brought the famous words of Bob Woodward to mind – ‘Follow the money’. With Google (CEO, Eric Schmidt); Microsoft; Minute Clinics (Michael Howe); and start-up Revolution Health (Steve Case (Founder of AOL)) all seeing opportunity in empowering the healthcare consumer through providing information services, there is a sense that we really are at an inflexion point. Steve Case likens this period to his experience at the start of the internet – very exciting times!
I needed a recharge and this year it was definitely worth spending ML&A’s hard earned money to participate.
Michael.
Second - for the more formal view iHealthBeat has also published a very useful wrap up of the 2008 HIMSS Conference
HIMSS 2008: Open Sesame and Consumer-Centricity
by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn
Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, is among the most successful health information entrepreneurs making up the 900 vendors at HIMSS this year. At the HIStalk reception where he accepted his "vendor of the year" award, Bush referred to the HIMSS exhibition floor as a "boat show." That's keen visual and visceral shorthand. While doing the marathon walk through the 1.1 million square feet of exhibition space, it's nearly impossible to digest all of the offerings in three days.
Now that I've got some perspective on the event, I can synthesize the most exciting trends in the health IT market in three words: open, secure and, most importantly, consumer-centric. While there remain substantial elements of "Big Iron" in the industry, the more nimble players are capitalizing on key market features: transparency, cost constraints on health IT investments and concerns about privacy.
The ever-expanding HIMSS
The health IT field is growing based on several metrics. For one, the crowd at HIMSS this year -- about 28,400 attendees -- was much higher than at last year's meeting in New Orleans. Also, the range of participating vendors was much wider this year -- everything from veteran companies (Cerner, Cisco, GE Healthcare, McKesson, Perot Systems, Siemens), to niche firms (such as CapMed in the personal health records space and REACH MD Consult, which is firmly focused on Web-based tele-consults for diagnosing stroke), to Big Caps (Google, IBM and Microsoft) and start-ups looking for a piece of the growing health IT pie.
It's always interesting to gauge the vendors' "real estate." No sub-prime mortgage crisis here! The west side of the convention center was filled with vendor booths from end to end. The fact that Chicago -- home of the largest convention center in the U.S. -- is next year's location speaks to HIMSS' phenomenal growth and the dynamic health IT field.
This was at least my 14th annual HIMSS attendance. This year, the themes of openness, security and consumer-facing are driving some of the most innovative offerings featured at HIMSS 2008.
Theme 1: Openness
Microsoft, a significant presence at HIMSS, announced this week that it intends to provide developers with code that had previously been available only through licensing from Microsoft. This code helps developers create new applications that will integrate on Microsoft platforms. Thus, in a new era of openness from the company, Microsoft set the stage for furthering openness in health IT. While the numerous MSFT-cynics are leery of this move, Microsoft is working with a growing list of smart health IT application companies that provide very useful applications in this market, where the mantra of interoperability has yet to be realized.
The 19th annual HIMSS survey of health IT leaders, released during the meeting, found that hospital CIOs and IT executives aren't planning to spend as much on new technology as they are on "unified communications" -- that is, linking together what they already have. Open standards adoption and the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise project, demonstrated within the exhibition, are linchpins of health IT openness.
On the accessibility front, this year's HIMSS conference featured a long list of Web/Internet solution providers of various flavors, including portal developers, hosting, tool kits, and clinical solutions for medical and drug information. Other vendors, including longtime system integrators and newer entrants providing connectivity solutions, also seek to fill the growing demand to "knit together" existing applications, according to HIMSS CEO and President Steve Lieber.
While Regional Health Information Organizations have had their share of challenges in the past year, there were more than 50 organizations calling themselves RHIO solution providers at the conference, including big players like Cerner, SAIC and Sun Microsystems, and health system integrators such as Medicity and Healthvision (formerly Quovadx).
Theme 2: Security
The HIMSS leadership survey indicates that privacy and security continue to be critical concerns. Firms offering digital rights management, privacy protection, release of information tools and security solutions should have some busy days ahead of them responding to requests for proposals on enhanced security, HIPAA and beyond. Still, survey data show that a plethora of security breaches come from within, so the solutions to many of these problems will still arise from policies and procedures, not technological fixes.
Privacy and security were themes in a majority of my discussions with vendors, and I didn't have to bring up the subject. It's clear that this topic is top-of-mind for both providers and consumers. Considering that Google announced its medical record pilot with the Cleveland Clinic at nearly the same time as the publication of a World Privacy Forum report on medical privacy, this is one thorny area to monitor in the coming months.
Theme 3: Consumer-centric
A growing number of vendors don't just talk about being "patient-centric" -- they actually provide solutions for serving patients as health care consumers. This theme of personalization and consumer-facing health IT is relatively new for this industry.
Microsoft's Grad Conn is a good person with whom to discuss this trend. His background includes a stint at Procter & Gamble, and you can't get more consumer-facing than training with that company. We discussed the HealthVault platform and its potential to integrate with a broad range of applications. He told me: "HealthVault is misunderstood. It is not a personal health record; it is a platform." Essentially, he explained, it's a "plumbing layer" on which other applications can run.
Microsoft is taking the long view to be part of the health care ecosystem the same way the company committed to the long cycle of innovation with Windows.
CapMed -- probably the "oldest" PHR player in the market since it emerged in CD-Rom form in 1996 -- is now offering icePHR Mobile, which enables PHR access from a consumer's cell phone. (The "ice" stands for "in case of emergency.")
Continue reading this excellent article here:
Further coverage is available via these links:
MORE ON THE WEB
- "Google Details Online Personal Health Record Service," iHealthBeat, 2/28
- HIMSS 2008 Conference
- HIMSS Leadership Survey
- "Mayo Clinic, Microsoft Partnership Aims To Streamline Health Care," iHealthBeat, 1/28
- World Privacy Forum report on privacy (.pdf)
With all this it is not quite like being there – but at least we have a flavour of what went on!
David.
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