I know that many of my readers are from in and around New York. So, I’m really excited to let you know that I’ll be attending the Digital Health Conference in New York City on December 1-2, 2011. It’s shaping up to be a great event with keynotes from Todd park, CTO of the US HHS, and T.R. Reid, Journalist and Author for The Washington Post and PBS. Plus, they have tracks covering: Innovations in the Inpatient Setting, Advances in the Delivery of Primary Care, Chronic Care Management, and Health & Wellness.

One of the smartest things they’ve done is they’re offering up to 9.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ That should bring a bunch of doctors to the event to get some more CME.

Plus, they’ve offered HealthcareScene.com readers a special discount: $200 off for non-providers and $50 off for providers. That’s only $195 and $145 respectively. I can’t remember the last healthcare IT conference I’ve seen that was that inexpensive. You’ll just need to use the discount code: HCS2011 to get those rates.

Of course, the real reason I go is to meet lots of interesting people. So, I hope that a lot of you make it to the event so I can meet more of you in person. I’m sure we’ll find one way or another to do a tweetup at the event. Plus, for those of you who can’t make it to the event, I’ll be tweeting about it on @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Here’s the full description of the Digital Health Conference Event:

New York eHealth Collaborative’s Digital Health Conference will bring together hundreds of health information technology (HIT) stakeholders and decision makers from across the region including providers of all types, the public sector, private industry, health plans, hospital administration, and others. The event will showcase the latest technologies, share best practices, inspire collaboration, and generally support the advancement of healthcare innovation.

Keynote Speakers

Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

T.R. Reid, Best-selling author and healthcare journalist, The Washington Post, PBS

Conference Highlights

• Learn from industry thought-leaders through a series of lectures, panels, demonstrations and otherbreakout sessions in each of the following tracks:

• Innovations in the Inpatient Setting

• Advances in the Delivery of Primary Care

• Chronic Care Management

• Health & Wellness

• Programming features an impressive array of health IT experts from a number of different backgrounds, including private sector innovators, government agencies, providers of all types, and hospital IT leadership

• Network with hundreds of healthcare stakeholders and decision-makers from across the region

• Earn up to 9.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™*

• Connect with private and public sector innovators showcasing the latest healthcare technologies and innovations

To view the full program and to register, visit www.digitalhealthconference.com

*This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and Policies of the Medical Society of the State of New York (MSSNY) through the joint sponsorship of MSSNY and New York eHealth Collaborative. MSSNY is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The Medical Society of the State of New York designates this live activity for a maximum of 9.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

 

This week I finally got my flight and hotel all lined up for my trip to HIMSS. Thanks to Practice Fusion for sponsoring that part of my trip to HIMSS. It’s greatly appreciated. I think Orlando is going to be a great destination for HIMSS and the energy and excitement is going to be something else thanks to the EMR stimulus money. It should be a pretty exciting event with far too many people, sessions and vendors to take in.

I’m still considering throwing together a New Media Meetup at HIMSS like I did last year. It was a lot of fun and worked out well since we just partnered with MEDecision to pull it off. If you’re interested in helping put something like that together or attending an event like that, let me know and I’ll be sure to let you know the details. I personally really like these sorts of intimate meetings with interesting people who understand New Media like blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc.

What other conferences do people attend? I’ve been to a number of different EMR events this last year. The Mobile Health Expo was a fun event and should get better as it grows. I really enjoyed mixing it up with all the doctors at AAFP (even if I did get kicked out of a session since I wasn’t a doctor).

I’d wanted to go to MGMA this year, but couldn’t quite swing it. The good thing is that the 2011 MGMA Annual Conference is in Las Vegas (my backyard) and so I can easily attend while still enjoying my own bed. HIMSS 2012 is also going to be in Las Vegas which is very convenient for me. Obviously, you can see I have a bit of a bias to EMR or healthcare IT related conferences in Las Vegas. It’s just so much nicer and luckily a fair amount of them come to Las Vegas.

I heard there’s going to be a healthcare portion of SXSW in Austin. That’s a conference I’ve always wanted to go to. Health 2.0 could also be interesting, but I find it much more consumer health app focused than EMR and doctor focused.

Are there any other EMR related conferences that I should keep my eye on?

As you know, I try to save my simpler posts for the weekend when less people are reading. Although, I do tend to ramble on occasion. Thankfully I type reasonably fast.

In some of my EMR readings of late I came across something that sounds similar to what I’ve talked about doing for EMR. They call it an EMR Buying Seminar. Sure, there have been a ton of EMR seminars lately. In fact, I did an EMR presentation in Austin myself. However, what struck me about this seminar is that it said it was the 10th annual EMR Buying Seminar. That’s a lot of years.

Of course, the thing I like least about this seminar is that it’s focused on hospital EMR systems. If you’ve read here much, you know I’m more of an ambulatory EMR kind of guy. Certainly there’s a lot of cross over, but the hospital stuff is far too political for my tastes.

I wonder how many people would be interested in an Ambulatory EMR Buying Seminar. Seems like it could be a really valuable thing including covering the details of the ARRA EMR stimulus package. I know the perfect place to hold it as well: Las Vegas. Let me know what you think of the idea.

Of course, an EMR Buying Seminar is a great thing for doctors and practice managers. My other idea I’m considering is holding an EMR conference of experts in EMR from the industry. Kind of a meeting with a wide open agenda and format where the participants are the presentation and become the conference. Basically, a bunch of really smart people getting together to discuss complex issues related to EMR. Could be a lot of fun.

How’s that for a short post that’s not so short?

Neil Versel posted a list of upcoming Healthcare IT conferences (a few aren’t just IT, but IT will be a large part of it) in the sidebar of his blog. Check out his list:

Medical Device Connectivity (Sept., Boston)
Medicine 2.0 (Sept. 17-18, Toronto)
AHIMA (Oct. 3-8, D-FW)
Health 2.0 (Oct. 6-7, SF)
MGMA (Oct. 11-14, Denver)
Connected Health Symposium (Oct., Boston)
CHIME09 (Oct., Indian Wells, Calif.)
E-Patient Connections (Oct., Phila.)
NIH mHealth Summit (Oct. 29-30, DC)
Inst. for Health Tech Transformation (Nov., LA)
AMIA (Nov. 14-18, SF)

That’s a lot of conferences. Were there any that we missed? That just goes through the end of the year. How do people stay up with all these conferences? I still haven’t made it to HIMSS, but am planning to go to Atlanta in March.

I’ve always wanted to put together my own EMR conference. Basically, just bring in a lot of really smart people to have insightful discussion about topics related to EMR. You could even bring in some EMR vendors and run them through the ringer. Maybe none of them would want to come and be held accountable for their software. However, if they did that would really say something. We could always do it on some test installs or something. Maybe the conference could put 10 EMR vendors through their paces and publish a report evaluating those 10 EMR companies. Then, that report could pay for the expenses of the conference. Who knows, I’m just thinking out loud on my blog. That’s what I love about blogs.

I’m not even sure it has to be a conference. Now that I think about it, it might be even more interesting to just bring a nice group of really smart people together to meet and discuss EMR and HIT for a day. Could produce some pretty interesting content. Plus, with a small group, you could pretty easily find a place to host the event I would think. Not to mention, I live in Las Vegas and everyone loves to come visit Las Vegas.

Back to the list above, which of the above conferences will you be attending? Are there any types of conferences that you wish were available related to EMR and HIT?