The HIMSS18 Conference and Exhibition is set to help healthcare professionals tackle serious challenges related to health data exchange and interoperability
Featured February 27, 2018 | EHRintelligence.com | Kyle Murphy, EHR Intelligence
With 40,000 attendees set to descend on Las Vegas, the 2018 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition will bring together the nation’s leading healthcare and health IT minds to tackle the nation’s top challenges, two of which are health data exchange and interoperability.
The event taking place between March 5 and March 9 at the Venetian, Palazzo, and Sands Expo offers numerous opportunities for healthcare professionals to learn about and explore real-world solutions to enabling the efficient and robust sharing of health information between providers, patients, and other stakeholders.
Here is a breakdown of some of the more intriguing opportunities with a focus on health information exchange, data exchange, and interoperability.
After the dust settles following registration and the opening reception on Sunday, Monday offers the most thorough look into the problems, challenges, and solutions of information sharing in healthcare.
Leading off is a keynote featuring Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative’s Micky Tripathi, McKinsey’s Jessica Kahn, and Pieces Technologies’ Ruben Amarasingham who will detail the progress of public and private sector efforts to advance interoperability and whether these efforts are working in parallel toward the same end, a learning health system.
The focus then turns to sharing behavioral health data via a health information exchange. Leaders from the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) will take the stage to educate attendees as to the complexity involved in enabling the sharing of behavioral health information and social determinants of health in their communities.
Next, San Diego Health Connect’s Dan Chavez and Aledade’s Edwin Miller will address the importance of developing interoperable health IT infrastructure capable of pulling together disparate sources of health data to benefit high-risk patients at the point of care, with an emphasis on leveraging mobile health (mHealth) and internet of things (IoT) technology in real time.
The penultimate session and closing keynote for Day 1 will feature insight from the likes of Tim Pletcher of the Michigan Health Information Network, Christopher Ross of Mayo Clinic, and John Kansky of the Indiana Health Information Exchange’s (IHIE’s) — among others. Attendees will learn about creative solutions to common health data exchange problems as well as whether today’s health IT infrastructure is capable of supporting the kind of advanced interoperability necessary for driving innovation.
The real start of HIMSS18, Tuesday offers a host of opportunities for attendees to explore various dimensions of health data exchange, integration, and interoperability.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be showcasing its efforts to enable patient access to medical images and reports throughout the day. Early that same day, the Interoperability Showcase opens its doors to share insight from more than 80 organizations using more than 120 systems to share data in real time. For those technophiles wanting their fix, the showcase will provide nonstop demonstrations the entire day.
On the educational side of things, representatives from Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN), Anthem, and Newman Regional Health will tackle the HIE value proposition for payers and providers. That session will be followed by Grady Health System’s Glenn Hilburn describing how the health system is improving patient outcomes as a result of interoperability and information sharing. Anthem and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota will then join Sutter Health in detailing how payers and providers can improve patient outcomes through coordinated efforts aimed at medication therapy management. Later in the day, Sutter Health will return to share a use on health data sharing using the Sequoia Project’s Carequality. If you run a medical centre and would like to improve your patient outcomes, then it may be time to update your medical equipment. If this is something that you would be interested in, then check out Medtronic.com for further information on what they offer.
For those not having gotten their full fill of health data exchange on Tuesday, the day closes with a reception for the interoperability and HIE community — a pleasant way to close out the day.
Those lucky enough to spend more than a few days at HIMSS18, the remainder of the event will showcase the value of HIE in addressing crisis management, the potential for blockchain to improve health data exchange, VA’s efforts to modernize its EHR infrastructure, the agency’s efforts at leveraging Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), and the impact on data quality on clinical decision-making.
This year’s show is full of great opportunities for learning how the healthcare industry is ensuring that the flow of critical health data is no longer an impediment to quality care, so don’t forget your comfy shoes.