Yes, I know…HIMSS was over a couple of weeks ago.  I have been busy.  If you have been following me on twitter ( @rilescat ), you know how busy I have been.

HIMSS09 was in Chicago this year.  This was my first visit to the annual HIMSS convention.  I walked away with many solidly good impressions and some suggestions for improvement.

Impressions:

I found the conference to be very well organized.  Registration was easy and quick.  The conference center was easily accessible via complimentary shuttles.  Once inside the facility we were able to find our way around via the kiosk maps that were stationed around the facility.  The maps were easy to use and gave a techy feel to the information booths.  I arrived on Friday night.  I attended classes on Saturday and Sunday.  I was very happy to see that HIMSS had given us free wireless access.  This was very convenient and made Twittering much easier throughout the conference…………

Now, I must say Saturday’s presenters were interesting, but I enrolled in the wrong course line.  I joined the Project Management course line hoping to learn something new that might make my day job’s IT shop more effecient and effective.  Sadly, I only took a handful of useful nuggets from the weekend.  I did hear that the courses on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Entrepreneurship in Health IT were excellent. Along with that, I did attend MANY EXCELLENT presentations throughout the rest of the week.  One of them included the legendary Kevin Mitnick, who I was able to get a signed book from

After the conference I did order all of the presentations for 399$.  I thought this was quite a deal.  I haven’t received them yet, but expect to shortly.

Once the vendor floors opened on Monday the real show started kicking.  Again I must say HIMSS did an excellent job organizing, making sure communication was abundant and easy, and staying connected via Twitter and other SM means.  The Twitter TweetUP on Monday evening was great and I was able to connect with many excellent people like @kerryatdell, @james_hart, @jchristenson, @himss, and many others.

@KerryAtDell - My choice for "Winner Nicest Tweep @ HIMSS" & "Most Attractive Accent Award"

Now on to the vendors.  For as impressed as I was with HIMSS, I was really lacking any large “happies” for the vendors.  Many (if not most) of them were showing their screamingly awesome 1998 technology with new shiny things on top.  Most technologies and approaches to the Health IT arena were very lackluster.  Two of the EMR world’s biggest players, Meditech and Cerner, didn’t attend the conference.  I found that to be very sad.  I think anyone who seriously wants to compete in HIT needs to make a showing at HIMSS.  There were some very excelling vendors at the show, but I would say maybe 20 of them that stood out.  Perhaps I simply have the wrong expectation of a HIT show.  When I attend a “CON” event or even a Detroit auto show the vendors pull out everything that is from tomorrow’s technology in use today.  They go out of their way to impress.

On the good side, the ~20 vendors that did impress, did it very well.  I think it is clear that the 800 pound gorillas of the IT world are about to make a hard core play on HIT.  Google, Dell, IBM, Cisco, HP, & Microsoft all came to play!  Google and Microsoft are seeing the PHR future before most medical facilities even realize the EHR/EMR present day.  IBM has an excellent line of equipment for the Patient Centered Medical Home.  Dell is going straight at the mobile delivery models that will be so necessary in the future.  And Cisco, which had the most impressive demo of all, brought Tele-Presence to full bare.  Cisco’s technology has the ability to reinvent the Health Care world with a whole new capacity to provide for tele-medicine.  My brain started going in every direction at their demo.  Tele-pharmacy, Tele-OR, Tele-Primary Care…..  All are real options today using Cisco’s TelePresence systems.  Now…if they could just make the thing for under $1 MILLION dollars….wow.

Overall the conference was solid.  If you want to know more, Tweet me.  This is just a 10 minute summary of my adventures.  Check out the photos below for Kevin Mittnick, and many other tid bits from the HIMSS09 Conference:

HP certainly had the best rubber ducks of the whole conference. Not to mention some very impressive archiving and PACS solutions.

The gentlemen at Chetu have some very interesting items for medical systems in need of programmers and developers.

The ladies in the Rubbermaid booth were very knowledgable and had interesting carts to show off. Very light weight, and easy to manage objects.

Kevin Mitnick, signing the book I purchased "The Art of Deception"