Erika S. Fishman, Director of Research
The 2010 Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual meeting was held at the beginning of this month from March 1st-March 4th in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia World Congress Center. Despite the depressed economic times, registration increased from the 2009 turnout. A total of 27,855 were registered for this year’s conference, with 8% of registrants making their way from outside of the US.
Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel, provided some eye opening information about mobile as the initial keynote speaker for the conference. Mr. Hesse informed the audience that adoption of mobile phones is the fastest technology adoption in history with 10 mobile phones being produced per each birth on Earth. With regard to mobile health, Mr. Hesse discussed that other parts of the world that spend a lower % of the GDP on health have surpassed the US with regard to mobile health. He also focused on the changes to come such as the much anticipated move from 3G to 4G and how the latter will provide a good template for privacy. Perhaps most sci-fi of all, he described a time in the near future where TV screens and monitors won’t be necessary for physicians to view patients at home, instead the patient can swallow a pill which will include a camera for the physician to actually see the insides of the patient.
Other keynote speakers included:
David Blumenthal – head of Office of National Coordinator for Health IT
Aneesh Chopra - White House chief technology officer
Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, III – Pilot US Airways, founder and CEO Safety Reliability Methods
Sanjay Gupta – Senior Medical Correspondent, CNN
Harry Markopolos – Fraud Investigator
The buzz term “meaningful use” was of course not lost on conference-goers and the sentiment seemed to be there was too little focus on the patients. There were a significant number of educational sessions specifically geared toward meaningful use. Even the sessions geared toward other areas, such as healthcare consumerism and ambulatory information systems, all tied in meaningful use.
Since the deadline for comments on the current meaningful use definition came two weeks after the conference, it seems the timing for the conference was perfect.
Another timed event was by Epocrates. The company announced that it will be rolling out an EMR system for solo and small practices in the fourth quarter.
The exhibit hall this year was not as flashy as last year, but it was bigger – in room size (391, 560 square feet!) and in number of vendors. This year there were 934 companies exhibiting, and 289 of those were new.
The HIMSS annual conference will be heading back to Orlando, Florida in February of 2011.
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