HIMSS17 is less than a week away and we at Healthcare Dive can't wait. Maybe it's because we're anticipating basking in the Florida sun through the windows of the Orange County Convention Center or maybe it's to escape the rapidly changing news regarding the Anthem-Cigna merger but it's sure to be a great learning and networking event. We decided to pull together a quick primer for what we're paying attention to next week. A very truncated version of this can be found on an Amendola Communications blog alongside what some other journalists will be watching this year.
Before we begin, some housekeeping points of order: Follow Associate Editor Jeff Byers on Twitter to get the latest updates and #OverheardatHIMSS tweets. Jeff will also be moderating a Facebook Live event hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Tuesday February 21 at 3pm EST to discuss the top healthcare issues for 2017.
Is it weird to refer to yourself in the third and first person plural in one article? We're not sure either but without further ado, here's our HIMSS17 primer:
HIMSS17 groundrules
- Bring your business card - You/your employer didn't print up 1,000 business cards for you to "accidentally leave them in the hotel." Besides conferences, where are you giving them out, anyway?
- It's OK to wear jeans on the first day of the conference if you downloaded Slack before your boss.
- Go ahead and introduce yourself to individuals you want to meet. You're at a conference. Be polite and recognize they may be busy but feel free to give them your business card to follow up. Thus, please refer to Groundrule #1.
- HIMSS is a marathon, not a race. Stay hydrated. You'll thank yourself later.
4 education sessions we flagged
Fireside Chat with Former CMS Administrators - Andy Slavitt and Dr. Mark McClellan plan to discuss the current state of healthcare reform and how to move forward. This session should be particularly interesting in light of Slavitt's recent interview with HISTalk where he called out the HIMSS conference as "a great party" with "massive shows" but it's customer base is largely unhappy with the products the health IT industry has produced in the wake of $35 billion spent to get eligible providers and hospitals to adopt EHR technology.
Can You Heal Me Now? Voice Agents for Home Health - There was buzz surrounding Amazon Echo at last year's Health 2.0 conference and PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute recently stated it's time for healthcare administrators to embrace learning about emerging technologies. Nathan Treloar, co-founder and president of Orbita, which recently launched an Amazon Echo-based community service tool, will discuss the current pros and cons of voice-powered assistants.
Accelerating Digital Health Innovation in Hospitals - Digital health: some have called it "snake oil" while others think of it as paydirt. Most consumer-driven digital health initiatives lack the evidence-based research that care delivery providers require so there's been an inclusion challenge in the care setting for these efforts. Brigham and Women's Hospital's CIO Dr. Adam Landman along with Partners HealthCare's Donna Fraser will discuss Brigham's work with its Digital Health Innovation Group.
The Patient Room of the Future: Designing for Millennials - Maybe it's because some of us at Healthcare Dive are still unsure on where we land on the whole "Am I a Millennial?" debate we have going on a day-to-day basis when we hear what's popular on the radio or maybe we've been mesmerized by our sister site Construction Dive's Tiny House Trends Series but it's clear consumer trends are shaping how businesses operate. Joan Saba from Naramore, Bain, Brady and Johanson will discuss the trends shaping the patient room of tomorrow......today.
3 tech trends we're watching
Blockchain - More and more digital ink has been given to blockchain in the healthcare dailies and it's still yet to be seen if it's all hype or not. With more companies entering the space, the dynamics of the market will be interesting as it shakes out. One question we had: Will blockchain sit with or separately from EHRs and how will the integration work?
Artificial Intelligence - From Siri, chatbots to self-driving cars, there's a whole new frighteningly weird technology-enabled world out there. How and will healthcare benefit from it? What are the leading trends in this areas and what spaces can they most effectively promote better health?
Interoperability -
Open question: Who will make the best Patronus joke at the Harry Potter's Wizarding World afterparty?
Much like data breaches, it's not a question of "if" but "when" a Harry Potter reference will be made on Wednesday. But who will take the crown for the cleverest dated-movie reference joke? There's been no public speculation prior to the publication of this article to the best of Healthcare Dive's knowledge.
What others are watching
"HIMSS17 should be filled with the latest and greatest in health IT and innovation including advancements in cutting edge technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. The industry is maturing and learning to better leverage data in meaningful ways and I’ll be on the lookout for substance, and for real innovations that will stick and enable behavior change." - Dr. Rasu Shrestha, Chief Innovation Officer at UPMC
“My focus for this HIMSS will be looking for simple, elegant health tech tools that offer solid UX/UI without disrupting the patient/physician relationship. I’ll be looking for solid use cases of patient engagement solutions that show true ROI. I’m not interested in trends. I’m interested in data and facts this HIMSS. I want to hear the use cases and ROI we have built in the industry to date. The EMR revolution is now old news. What have we done with the information highway the industry has built? How are we better engaging and empowering both physicians and doctors?" - Dr. Geeta Nayyar, Chief Healthcare & Innovation Officer for TopLine MD and Femwell Group Health, Inc.
"Value-based care is top-of-mind for almost everyone this year. With Medicare’s new value-based payment systems, almost all physicians are going to have to adapt to this new payment model. Hospitals are adapting to Medicare’s bundled payments and insurers are rapidly expanding value-based contracts for both physicians and hospitals. Technology has a huge role to play in making care more convenient and effective for both caregivers and patients, and it’s getting better all the time.
This is the year that the healthcare industry will start to take patient engagement seriously, in part because we now have technology that can make the process more efficient and affordable. CRM systems will become the go-to technology for organizing non-clinical data about patients, and this non-clinical data will play a bigger role in chronic disease management. We are learning that what happens in patients’ daily lives has an enormous influence on outcomes, and we need the socio-economic data that patients share to be organized and accessible for all caregivers. Telehealth and remote monitoring will also take a big leap forward this year, as primary care physicians adopt the technologies to stay close to those patients that need more intensive services to get and stay healthy. I also see patient portals getting much deeper use, providing a secure and convenient communication challenge for patients and caregivers." - Dr. Nick Van Terheyden, CMO of NTT DATA
"I intend to spend my time at HIMSS looking for two things. The first: Technology that takes patient and consumer engagement beyond reactive, episodic care and provides more proactive, continual care while at the same time not disrupting already-hectic clinical workflows. The second: Organizations and vendors that are stretching out of their comfort zones and using low-cost technology to engage with under-served populations (and not just their normal pilot program participants) in order to achieve lasting behavior change." - Brian Eastwood, consumer engagement and consumer directed healthcare analyst at Chilmark Research
It wouldn't be a Healthcare Dive HIMSS preview without at least 2 bar/restaurant recommendations
Last year, Healthcare Dive made some food and wine recommendations for HIMSS's Las Vegas setting. We parsed it back this year; partly because of the rapidly changing news regarding the Anthem-Cigna merger but also partly because of the rapidly changing ACA repeal-and-replacement news. Here are Healthcare Dive's Quick HIMSS Bar and Restaurant Picks for 2017:
Tako Cheena - If you can get past the stylized misspellings of "hot dawgz" and "takos" or want to embrace the SEO-friendly world we've found ourselves in alongside interesting takes on Asian fusion, then Tako Cheena may be the place for you.
Lil Indies - There's a vinyl swap meet at 4pm on February 19th and the bar has craft beer. That's good enough for us.
We also put together an aging hipster's Spotify playlist for the conference you can listen to here.