Make Me Sleep

HIMSS is among the preferred health conferences and the largest tradeshow for technology in healthcare. Like the trek to Mecca, healthcare information systems gurus, top software companies, and medical professionals went to Las Vegas last Feb for the biggest show of its type in our industry. More than 30,000 attended this four-day event and at times it looked that I spoke to them all.

HIMSS brings education, information, and success stories about technology in healthcare to thousands of visitors. The list of software companies attending includes lots of HIT (Hospital Information Technology) vendors who attend to demonstrate their EMR and HMR medical apps. Experts participate to discuss new processes, technology breakthroughs and product enhancements with hospital corporate executives, CIOs, and healthcare professionals as a part of an effort to change and improve health-care. Software users and buyers were there to find out how they can improve their work environment and how they can offer more effective services to their patients.

I had a chance to attend the show. I had four goals in mind for my HIMSS12 experience:

1. Find the most powerful meaningful use vendors with “real” success stories for both hospitals and physicians. I was looking for customer references and testimonials.

2. Review ICD-10 resources that are generally accessible for our readers, looking for best practices and educational resources alongside tools available for both hospital and physician offices.

3. See cutting edge technical solutions that have got the potential to modify health-care. Whether the technology is hospital based or centered at personal health, I was looking for the real game changers.

4. Most of all, to extend my understanding about the industry and the software being utilized by the medical industry.

The truth is 4 days is not enough time for an event of this size. I rapidly realized that achieving all of my goals was going to be tricky. I had many opportunities to speak with a great variety of vendors to discuss what they feel are their largest technology improvements and challenges. That said I might have spent all 4 days just talking to the vendors about technology in healthcare. Hospital CIO’s are abundant at HIMSS and I was also in a position to debate hospital software with many of them. I chatted with 1 or 2 industry experts about software for doctors and well as hospital software. Finally, I was able to update the top software companies about our goals and growth plans at UsersUnite . In the final analysis I had a superb show and look forward to next year’s conference.

If you are a health care pro I highly suggest that you go to the HIMSS website and sign up for HIMSS13 when registration opens up.

1 by Jason Sanderson, Industry Director – Healthcare and Hospital for UsersUnite. Jason writes a blog that discusses the 1 and stories related to hospital and healthcare software of all types. If you happen to have a subject that you’d like to see Jason write about please send her an e-mail with the details at salesusersunite.com.