This week I had the honor of being invited to attend The HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) Virtual Conference.
HIMSS is the premier society for those of us interested in information presentation and management around healthcare. They focus on providing leadership for efficient use of healthcare IT to help healthcare providers, administrators, and IT professionals.
The conference delivered education sessions and vendor exhibits in a virtual manner by integrating WebEx meetings, chat services, and video demonstrations to provide HIMSS members and guests a chance to interact and learn about issues impacting healthcare IT (or #HIT, as we call it on Twitter).
I was invited to attend the conference because I am active on Twitter. I agreed to cover the conference virtually, using periodic 140-character posts during the sessions. In typical Twitter fashion, I would also re-tweet (send out again) the posts of the people that I follow, who also attended the conference. Some of my Twitter followers commented that reading my tweets was like being at the conference itself, and that they clearly understood the main points of the sessions.
The keynote session was delivered by Congressman Michael C. Burgess from Texas. Congressman Burgess is also a medical doctor and is very closely involved with heathcare reform on Capital Hill. He talked a lot about the current American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and other pending legislation.
The gist of the keynote session was that (as of this blog post) even Congress is confused about what “Meaningful Use," as defined in ARRA, is. Supposedly, Congress will define it on June 16, 2009.
The other keynote was that, in addition to the ARRA, a number of other legislations are also being proposed and debated.
Other sessions at the conference were presented by a number of HIMSS members and healthcare providers. Some very good content around how best to approach Healthcare IT projects, including recommendations that senior leadership should be very committed and that nursing and physician teams should identify change champions, was discussed.
In addition to educational sessions, there was also a virtual trade show floor with vendor and partner booths where you could download information on products and services, chat with representatives of the companies, and enter drawings for prizes. One of the interesting booths I visited was HealthcareGoesMobile (http://healthcaregoesmobile.com). HealthcareGoesMobile is a community for clinicians, IT folks, and administrators who are considering mobile point-of-care technology. Another vendor I met with was i365, a Seagate company that provides backup and data recovery services.
Overall, the conference was well attended. I think they had close to 3,000 people sign-up, and the conference experienced no technology issues that I could see. HIMSS is planning on hosting another virtual conference in November 2009.
If you would like more information on the conference, please visit http://www.himss.org or contact us directly. Also, if you would like to discuss how your practice or business could benefit from some of our experiences around ARRA, EHRs/PHRs, or how to use Twitter in healthcare, please contact us and we would be happy to share with you.
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Interesting write up about the experience. I actually felt like there was less interaction at this years conference than last year. I was surprised since I'd have thought everyone would want to talk about ARRA. The sessions were better this year than last year though.
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