HITExpo ThankTanks Spur Online Discussion on the Nature of EHRs, Innovation & Patient Experience

Last week at the inaugural 2018 Health IT Expo (#HITExpo), we kicked things off with three ThinkTank sessions:

  1. Going Beyond EHRs – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULVQA4xEIRU
  2. Practical Innovation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uc9_BCKQ84
  3. Communication & Patient Engagement – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60MAP04MoOw

These ThinkTanks were live-streamed via YouTube and were meant to engage members of the #HITMC, #HITsm, #hcldr and other online communities who could not be with us in person in New Orleans. Looking back over the tweets I believe it would be safe to say: mission accomplished.

The online discussion around the ThinkTanks was very rich and involved many different perspectives. During ThinkTank 1 Jim Tate had a keen bit of insight to share based on a comment made by panelist Shahid Shah of Netspective Media:

This was quickly followed by another interesting statement from Shah:

An interesting suggestion in ThinkThank 1 came from Dr. Fatima Paruk, Chief Medical Officer, Population Health at Allscripts – that it was never too late to get physicians involved in EHR optimization given that they are one of the main users of EHR systems. This was especially relevant given how much EHR frustration contributes to physician burnout.

Jeremy Coleman, one of the HITExpo’s social media ambassadors did an expert job at distilling a 5min during ThinkTank 1 into a single tweet:

The most interesting comment in ThinkTank 1 was made by Justin Campbell of Galen Healthcare. He suggested that one way to go beyond the EHR was to use the audit log information to identify workflow bottlenecks, training opportunities and UI improvements.

The second ThinkTank generated a spirited discussion amongst the panelists and with the online audience when the topic of blockchain technology was brought up. It started when John Lynn made the following statement:

Jared Jeffery from KLAS Research then immediately followed up his tweet with this humorous counter-point:

I agree with both John and Jared. The last thing we need is over-inflated hype around blockchain in healthcare. The technology itself holds promise but as an enabler of other technologies and processes. Simply slapping blockchain on existing processes is not going to yield the innovation healthcare needs. We need something more. The good news is that some pioneering organizations and HealthIT companies are experimenting with blockchain which will hopefully lead to incremental improvements.

Experimentation and the willingness to do something was on the mind of Jerry Cade – one of the panelist in ThinkTank 2. He had a poignant warning for all of us in healthcare:

In my opinion the most practical piece of advice of the day was shared by Shahid Shah during ThinkTank 2. It’s certainly something I’m going to pay more attention to in the future:

Your truly had the opportunity to moderate ThinkTank 3 and it was a blast. We had an amazing set of panelists that included nurses, HealthIT insiders, industry experts and the voice of the patient. It resulted in a robust discussion on the nature of patient experience.

Grace Jaime of Oneview Healthcare shared a keen insight which triggered a round of discussion on the need to clearly measure patient experience and communication effectiveness – If you can’t measure something, you can’t improve:

Grace Cordovano, professional patient advocate, then had this to add:

During ThinkTank 3 Sarah Bennight of Stericycle Communication Solutions made an interesting observation about patient advocacy and how it could be modeled after a legal precedent:

If you didn’t have the chance to catch the ThinkTanks live, I’d encourage you to watch the recordings (links above). The sessions were filled with valuable insights and practical advice that you can use right away. It was a lot of fun to participate in these ThinkTanks and I am definitely looking forward to doing more in the future.

In closing I think this tweet summed up the overall sentiment (from friend Ashley Dauwer at MEDITECH):

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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