Today I’m attending the Mobile Health Conference (mHealth) conference in Las Vegas. So far it’s been a pretty effective conference for me already. Although, I’ve gotten most of the value from the people and vendors I’ve met and talked with. Although, is that really any surprise at a conference. More about those meetings later.

In this morning’s keynote conversation, they had executives from T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint that spoke and then did a short panel discussion. I must admit that I’d hoped for more from the panel discussion and I probably would have rather just had the whole thing a panel discussion. With that said, the most interesting topic they discussed was the 2G, 3G, and 4G topic.

Of course, they didn’t really dig into the different wireless signals like I would have liked to see. However, the executive from T-mobile said both in his speech and in the panel discussion that they’re committed to supporting 2G for 10 more years. Then, he offered this whopper: that most mHealth applications work perfectly fine on 2G and don’t actually need the higher 3G and 4G speeds.

He’s actually right that most health applications do work fine on 2G. However, I can’t help but wonder if that’s a function of there just not being enough 3G and 4G coverage to make it reasonable for a company to make an app that will only work on those faster networks.

From what I’ve seen in the internet world, applications will grow to use whatever resources they are given. Plus, there’s some applications that never get built until they have the resources to make it a reasonable reality.

So, while it may be true that the health applications of today generally work well on 2G, it’s worth asking what applications would we have if 3G and 4G were more widely available? I think we’re getting close to the point that we’ll find out. I imagine most EMR software would be happy to use whatever bandwidth you give them. Not to mention it would improve the user experience.

A few other quick hits:
-The AT&T executive (I believed) argued that they’re getting 4G speeds with 3G technology. So, why should they move to 4G?
-The Sprint executive nailed it on the head when he said that time is the economy of today. Higher speeds and better applications will save people time and that’s valuable.
-I can’t help but wonder where Verizon is. 3 out of 4 isn’t bad though.

Well, as you might have noticed, I decided to take the weekend off from the blog. I figured it was reasonable to take a weekend off after the craziness of HIMSS. I still have a ton of content from HIMSS 10 that I’d like to post. So, watch for more of that over the next couple weeks as well.

I thought a nice video to kick off the new week would be nice. This video is of Robin Daigh from MD-IT and Craig Mercure from MxSecure talking about their partnership with Verizon to create a really interesting health information exchange. I talked about this Medical Transcription Service Consortium previously, but it was really neat to talk about it in person with Robin and Craig (Full Disclosure: Both Robin and Craig advertise on EMR and HIPAA). I also talked with the CMO from Verizon about it and so more details on that to come later.

For now, enjoy what I think is an interesting play in the HIE space to bring together all the transcription companies and now anyone who wants to participate and start sharing clinical data.

This video coverage of HIMSS 10 sponsored by Practice Fusion and their Free EMR.

Today was a much more laid back day at HIMSS. I still had pretty much back to back meetings, but I’m learning little by little to manage the day at HIMSS. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m getting closer to managing this HUGE event.

In kind of a surprise meeting, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Shahid from The Healthcare IT Guy. We had a really good chat and I can see us working on a number of projects together. It’s been really interesting to meet people in person that you’ve only ever known online. A few times I’ve come away disappointed, but the opposite was true with Shahid. I couldn’t be more impressed with Shahid.

I had a number of really interesting interviews today and a meeting with the CMO of Verizon to talk about an interesting medical data exchange that they’re working on. It was really interesting to hear the vision of what Verizon and the group behind it are doing to make healthcare data exchangeable. I’ll be posting a lot more on this in the future, but you can see my original post about this consortium for some initial information. I have a video talking about the consortium and another video talking about the really neat technology behind MModal.

I also had a nice media lunch from HP. The food was great. The content was a little weak, but their talk of the thin clients was pretty useful for me in my day job. Little by little I’ve been getting more and more convinced that thin clients will be the future of desktop management. At least in any reasonably sized implementation.

Oh yes, and I have to mention the most incredibly tacky part of the lunch. While they were speaking, one of the media people’s phone rang. Not only did they not turn off the ringer, but he then proceeded to answer the phone in the middle of the meeting and was talking on the phone while the person was presenting. Then, after the call he got up and left. I was totally shocked that he really did that. Unbelievable!!

However, the event of the day without a doubt was the ONC town hall. It started off with David Blumenthal announcing that the details of accrediting the EHR certifying bodies (officially the NPRM on certification) were just released. You can find the details posted on the HHS website. I’ll be posting a lot more about this soon. ONC did a pretty lengthy question and answer and even a powerpoint on the new accreditation for EHR certifications. I’ll cover those details very soon.

I also met one of the people behind Fierce Health IT and talked about possibly working together on something. They really went all out to kind of make a splash at HIMSS and I must admit that they’ve come along way since they first started.

Lots of other things, but I better get to bed so I can make the Blumenthal keynote tomorrow.