By Karthik Srinivasan, Senior Vice President, IBA
Nearly 45,000 attendees and 1400 exhibitor booths on display. The key strategy and challenge was narrowing down and finding the needle in the haystack for what to focus on in an event spread over 5 days, with influential keynote speakers like Eric Schmidt, Former Google CEO, Alphabet (Google’s Parent Company) Technical Advisor and former Chairman on Monday evening; and basketball legend and billionaire Magic Johnson on Friday afternoon. Eric Schmidt launched the Google Healthcare API, part of Google Cloud, allowing seamless data sharing and interoperability, while ensuring security. I was pleased to see the APIs in action as well as several Google and Flex solutions on display at the Google booth. Google Glasses and its phenomenal ability to access patient’s vital statistics, as I understood it, could virtually eliminate the need for desktops, tablets and mobile access at hospitals and clinics in the next 5-10 years. With a combination of IoT, wireless and Bluetooth, apps and data can sit in the cloud, while Google Glasses can be all that a physician carries walking around the hospital.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]“Key themes of HIMSS in three words – integrate, interoperate, and innovate.”[/su_pullquote]CMS Chief Seema Verma’s keynote speech provided insight into Federal Health IT initiatives, focusing on interoperability efforts such as the Blue Button 2.0 rollout for patient control of Health Information and the launch of the MyHealthEData application, further stressing the importance of instantaneous access to medical information via mobile apps by patients. Other Federal keynote speakers included DHA’s VADM Raquel Bono and VA’s David Shulkin. VADM Bono hit the key themes of HIMSS in three words – integrate, interoperate, and innovate. It was amazing to note that 67 percent of Military Health procurement is from the commercial sector, highlighting the need for DHA to interoperate with the civilian world. About $800M of DoD’s annual medical equipment replacement costs provide a huge potential for infusion of IoT to enable Healthcare, telemedicine and telehealth products into DoD MHS over the next 5 years. VA’s David Shulkin painted a picture of VA’s struggles over decades. Nearly 120 instances of VISTA are going to be replaced with one EHR system through Cerner. Not only does VA need to handle 1,675 facilities, compared to 665 for DHA, but the Agency has more than 100 interfaces, compared to DoD’s 27. Consolidating 120 instances across these locations with a single EHR is going to be a monumental implementation challenge for VA. The VA Secretary is betting on strong PMO oversight for program management, requirements workflow, and configuration management. VA also launched the Lighthouse Lab, with its limited availability of APIs, for developers to create mobile and web applications for Veterans.
Other interesting Federal sessions I attended included DHA SDD’s COL Rich Wilson, who gave an overview of various applications and how they interface with VA; DHA J-6 Health IT Directorate’s COL Flanders and COL Seeley, who gave overview of J-6 Information Operations support for MHS to achieve integrated Healthcare delivery; and DHA’s Enterprise Intelligence & Data Solutions Chief, Chris Nichols, who highlighted the availability of actionable insight to combat the opioid epidemic, and the use of the MHS Opioid Registry.
[su_pullquote]“Interoperability was probably the most used buzzword at each session.”[/su_pullquote]Interoperability was probably the most used buzzword at each session and at the forefront of each exhibitor’s capabilities pitch. Several emerging technologies were showcased, including augmented reality promising digital technology that could showcase nearby available emergency medical services and the ability for patients to describe their pain, while enabling nurses to find veins and blood flow. Several AR solutions were on display that can assist surgeons in the OR. Mobile technologies and mobile health solutions that enable increased communication amongst all the players in a hospital environment, tagging the communication for claims management process at another display, provided a sneak peek at how these technologies can easily interoperate into cloud and an EHR solution. Whether it is the ability to share DICOM images of MRIs, CT scans across the globe using telehealth, or the ability to remotely control the infusion pumps in critical care units, Healthcare technologies facilitated by the fundamentals of cloud, wireless, Bluetooth, and data analytics is enabling seamless access and intelligent decision making to not only save patient lives, but also speed up their recovery. Data and analytics to support valuable insights in Healthcare to measure outcomes, manage cost and provide intelligent analysis of the right intervention of high risk patients at the right time was at a display by the newly launched OptumIQ. IBM Watson’s huge showcase of its recent acquisitions provided valuable insight into how both external and internal factors in a Healthcare environment can be combined to solve global problems such as epidemics, flu, and allergies. Commercial Health IT companies touted their solid capabilities in various areas such as clinical and business intelligence, emerging payment models, Health Information Exchange, revenue cycle management, connected health and telehealth. It was extremely educative to listen to various lightning sessions organized throughout the floor, including the HIMSS Analytics sessions. With more than 300 sessions each day, it was nearly impossible to pick and choose all the ones you wanted to attend while balancing the live demos at the Exhibit Halls.
Espresso machines and caffeine in the Exhibit Halls kept the long days going while the evenings were filled with networking events that ran well past midnight.
We must also thank HIMSS for organizing several startups to present their projects in the Innovation Lab. It was eye-opening to see some of the smartest young brains, and also to see several students and universities participating at HIMSS year after year.
The most inspirational session came from Liz Murray’s speech – Homeless to Harvard. Her triumph growing up and overcoming a difficult background with cocaine-addicted parents, going from living on the streets and sleeping on subways to finishing high school in just two years and receiving a full ride to Harvard, then finishing her Bachelor’s degree, and becoming an inspirational speaker, author, and even getting nominated for three Emmy awards, was a delight to watch and hear and a real inspirational tale for all in attendance.
Saving the best for last, Friday’s keynote by Keller Rinaudo from Zipline was my favorite. If there is one place that ranks Rwanda ahead of the United States, it is in the implementation of drones that transport blood to save lives. A startup company has revolutionized the effort, with drones with paper parachutes (costing 20 cents) and a Tesla battery powering a 40-pound payload traveling at 100 miles an hour to transport blood into the muddy forests and poor civic infrastructure in Rwanda. To reduce a typical 4-hour blood transport to 15 to30 minutes, Zipline had to create an entire air traffic control system; build drones; and develop a supply chain system, and physical and logical infrastructure in Rwanda. By the end of 2018, Tanzania, Rwanda and its 30 million people will be within 15 to 30 minutes of a blood supply, or any other lifesaving medical supply. Hats off to Zipline. I can’t wait to see this type of implementation on display at United States commercial and military medical facilities.
A few suggestions for the upcoming HIMSS19 in Orlando: I recommend that the Federal sessions be combined into a single day so that it is easy on our schedule and allows us to plan and attend those sessions at once. I also recommend keeping a day free of important keynotes so that the attendees can spend more time at the Exhibit Halls.
Over the past two decades, Karthik has been an attendee, speaker and panelist at a multitude of global industry events and conferences, a prominent speaker at GSA, DHS and Project Management Institute (PMI) events and conferences. The insights shared here are based on his own lessons learned and takeaways from HIMSS18.
