With approximately 17,000 individual members and 275 corporate members, HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society - http://himss.org) is the largest trade association for healthcare informatics. The HIMSS 2006 Annual Conference and Exhibition in San Diego attracted perhaps 30,000 attendees and 800 exhibitors (my estimates). The San Diego convention center was bursting at the seems, with some organizations - primarily educational institutions - using what appeared to be hastily cobbled together booths in the corridors. This was my first visit to a HIMSS trade show, and I have not seen anything of this size since my now long past career in the electronics industry.
HIMSS definitely strained the San Diego infrastructure. Taxis and hotel rooms were hard to find, as were seats on flights. One of my taxi drivers said he was getting far more trips to the convention center than usual. The booths of the major exhibitors - Siemens, Eclipsys, Epic, GE, etc. - were huge, most with multiple presentation and conference areas. Many of them exceeded the square footage of the average American single family home, and at least one booth (I think Eclipsys) was a 2 storey structure with conference rooms in the upper level. This was clearly the place to be for anyone who was anyone in health informatics management, with senior executives from vendors, users, and Government alike, all rubbing elbows on the show floors and in conference rooms. Exhibitors could classify themselves (they were not restricted to one category), and the largest was EMR/EHR, with around 175 listings. There were additional separate categories for EMR/EHR Ambulatory Care and EMR/EHR Military. There is clearly big money being spent on healthcare informatics. If there was one take away from HIMSS 2006, it was the feverish interest in sharing of electronic medical / health records. Of the areas set aside for organizations to show case their products and technology, by far the largest was that for interoperability, which was much larger than all the others combined (64 scheduled presentations, vs. 28). I sensed undertones of "This is how you share information my way, which is the best way" but I am sure these will pass. I attended a presentation and demonstration on FHIE (Federal Health Information Exchange) with the ability to share health records for members of the US military between the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. As this software appears in the public domain through the Freedom of Information Act, it will probably help set a de facto standard, much as VistA has for electronic health records. There were multiple vendors offering VistA based solutions, and the booth of at least one appeared to be quite busy. I was at HIMSS as part of the team from VistA Software Alliance (http://www.vistasoftware.org), a trade association of organizations offering services associated with VistA, such as implementation and support, as well as associated products. Although we were in a small booth in an upstairs room (i.e., off the main floor), we had a fair amount of traffic and several attendees sought us out. Visitors could learn about VistA and pick up reprints of recent articles about VistA as well as collateral from member companies. Fidelity's collateral was the FOIA VistA VivitA 20060113 live CD of VistA on GT.M on GNU/Linux, and this was quite a popular item. http://himss.org/ASP/ContentRedirector.asp?ContentId=65647 is a survey on EMRs released by HIMSS during the show that clearly shows an increased level of interest in EMRs. I feel confident that VistA will be a hot topic at HIMSS 2007. [Side bar: I was actually not able to spend as much time at HIMSS as I planned to. My original schedule called for me to depart from Philadelphia on Sunday, February 12 at 6:05pm. A storm ending around noon had dumped around 18 inches of snow, but Philadelphia airport had reopened, the incoming aircraft arrived on schedule, the passengers had boarded and settled by 6:10pm, and I expected the doors to close and the aircraft to leave. Instead, nothing happened - not even an announcement - until 6:45, when the cabin crew announced on the PA system that our pilot was still in Chicago! They set a 9pm departure, and permitted us to leave the aircraft. About fifteen minutes later, they announced that the flight was cancelled because by the time he arrived pilot would have exceeded his legal limit on the number of hours he could fly that day. When we returned to the aircraft to pick up carry-on bags we had left on board, we found that the cabin crew had not been told about the flight's cancellation, and they heard about it from the passengers! Whatever expertise must be demonstrated to get a license to run an airline clearly doesn't include internal communication... The earliest the airline could reschedule me was Monday evening, and I duly flew to Los Angeles, boarded the last flight of the day to San Diego. We flew to San Diego, but the airport was fogged in, so we returned to Los Angeles. In my travels, I have on more than one occasion arrived at my destination a day later than intended. This was the first time that I was two days late.] -- Bhaskar ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. 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