HIMSS18 is now a wrap, and it’s time to move from the excitement of the Vegas show floor back to the day-to-day of the office. What are the biggest lessons that attendees will take away from the show? And what did the Dimensional Insight team learn from talking to attendees?
Here are 3 takeaways from the healthcare exhibition.
The patient is front and center
No longer is the focus on technology just for technology’s sake. Now, all eyes are on the patient. How will implementing technology help improve outcomes? How will it empower the patient? Will it improve the patient experience?
Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, talked about several new initiatives for interoperability. She discussed how the Trump administration is putting patients first by making interoperability a top priority and allowing patients faster access to their medical records. In addition, she talked about the importance of open APIs so patients can access their entire medical histories.
Several companies at HIMSS18 also announced patient engagement initiatives. This includes new forms of technology such as mobile alerting and messaging for patients, remote monitoring, and health kiosks so patients can easily access their health data. The key is to build loyalty among healthcare consumers.
As far as analytics is concerned, healthcare organizations are focusing much more on how analytics can help them improve patient outcomes, as well as improve on various quality measures. The key here is having quality data to work with and standardized measures across the organization so that everyone is looking at the same data in the same way.
Technology providers are feeling the pressure from big players
Recently, Apple, Google, and Amazon have all made major announcements in healthcare. And it’s clear that other vendors are now feeling that pressure and navigating how to respond to it.
For example, Cerner announced a partnership with Apple at the show in which the two companies are working together to make patient data available via the Apple Health app. In addition, other companies talked about advancing their technology through integrations with Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home. Finally, there was a big push at the conference around machine learning and artificial intelligence. It seems a lot of companies were eager to talk about how they are or will be providing AI/ML solutions. This is likely because of pressure from the behemoth companies.
Providers still struggle with actionable insights
It was clear from our conversations with healthcare providers that many are still struggling to make use of the data they have. This was apparent through our CHIME Focus Group discussion with several CIOs. Many of the participants said their organizations are “data rich, but information poor.” The issues they are struggling with:
- Data management and ensuring their users are working with quality data
- Having a multitude of BI tools in use across the organization and no “standard”
- Prioritizing what technology investments will yield the most benefits given limited resources
Our many visitors to the booth also face these pain points; thankfully, they were able to see the benefits of our integrated approach to data management and business intelligence through Diver Platform.
Dimensional Insight at HIMSS18
All in all, we found that HIMSS18 was a very successful show. We benefited from the many conversations we had with healthcare providers and talking to them about the challenges they are facing, as well as from the educational sessions.
We look forward to seeing you all in Orlando next year for HIMSS19!
Ready for a test drive of our healthcare analytics software?
Kathy started her career in television news writing and producing. She then worked at a public relations agency and as a freelance writer before joining Dimensional Insight in 2013.
Kathy has presented at several events in both healthcare and wine & spirits, including the Healthcare Innovation Summit, the Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference (HITMC), and the WSWA Women’s Leadership Council (WLC) Conference. Kathy is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and a member of Women of the Vine & Spirits.
She is also host of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast (www.smarthcpodcast.com) and is a member of the Forbes Communications Council.
Kathy holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Boston University.
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