Best and Worst of HIMSS Wrapup

I saw someone else do something like this and so I thought it would be fun to do a post talking about the best and worst parts of HIMSS. So, here we go.

Best Session
No doubt the ONC town hall was one of the most popular sessions and for good reason. The place was packed with standing room only. It was kind of neat to be there when they announced that the final rule on EHR certification bodies was just posted. It was interesting to see them filter the questions from the audience, but there was some interesting information gleaned from the town hall.

Best Party
I think there’s little doubt that the MEDecision party at the Aquarium was the best party at HIMSS. The location was amazing. Colbie Caillat was perfect entertainment. The food was the best I ate in Atlanta. The place was packed, but not so much so that you couldn’t move. The New Media part of that event was even better since we had a nice quiet place to network and eat the food on actual flatware. Definitely a highlight of my evenings at HIMSS.

Most Overused Term
I’d say HIE wins this category. The discussion around Health Information was intense. Although, it’s a mess of people trying to conquer this incredible challenge.

Best Giveaway
A lot of people were talking about the yellow slippers from one of the vendors. I wanted to get some, but they were out when I made it there. So, anyone that runs out can’t win this award. So, I’ll give it to Econo-keys for handing out the washable keyboards. I have 3-4 of them, so I’ll be giving them away when I post the video I did of them. They’re really cool.

Best Party Companions
I had a great time hanging out with the people from MedicExchange, Dermanaut and the 2 ladies I’m too lazy to find on twitter but were fun to be around. Great time together.

Best Booth
OnBase (or something like that) had this amazing booth/bar that looked like a baseball stadium. It was unreal.

Best Keynote
Not sure any of the keynotes were all that impressive. Blumenthal’s was so so with a nice story at the beginning. Sully made a compelling argument for more safety procedures in healthcare. So, I guess I’ll give it to Sully.

Wildest Party
I’d have to say the HISTalk party was pretty intense. Between the sashes, the crowded quarters and Jon Bush of Athena Health on stage that place was pretty crazy. Lots of amazing people there though.

Worst Hotel
Some people hated the Holiday Inn, but the hotel I was in, the Country Inn and Suites, had to be the worst. Their were stains on the floor, the bed linens sucked and most importantly 3 of the 4 nights I had to convince the front desk staff to restart the router so that the unsecured wireless would work for me. Worst hotel I’ve stayed in I think.

Best Technology No One’s Heard Of
MModal’s natural language recognition was outstanding. I have a short video of them telling their story. I’ll post it soon so more people can know about this really interesting technology. Nuance must be a little nervous (although they announced the purchase of a similar technology).

Tomorrow I’ve scheduled the first of my topical posts from HIMSS. First up is one of my readers favorite subjects: CCHIT.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

9 Comments

  • I agree with the hotel! I thought the wireless was just me, so I kept rebooting my computer a stealing the wireless from the comfort inn next store. At least it was mostly clean and the restaurant next store had surprisingly good bar food…

  • Yep, the wireless was driving me nuts. I literally had to call the front desk and spew IT jargon for them to finally believe that I wasn’t full of it and go and restart the router. Blah!

    Oh well, at the end of the day I survived. Just won’t go back there again.

    I never tried the restaurant next store but almost did my last night. I guess I should have.

  • Hi John,
    It was a pleasure to meet you in person at the meet the bloggers session.

    I have to agree with the hotel. My room at the Country Inn and Suites was FILTHY. My phone and TV were both broken. Someone had put their fist or another object through the closet door. The shower was so bad I went without. And the grossness of grossness (is that a word?) – – someone had OBVIOUSLY slept on the sheets before I got there. YUK!! The carpet was so stained and dirty, I wouldn’t walk on it barefoot.

    And I missed the parties at night because I was afraid to go out to my car in that neighborhood. Not having Internet, phone or a clean, safe place to sleep, I left the conference 3 days early.

    HIMSS needs to make amends to the many people who paid good money for the conference and for hotels. We trusted that their staff had checked out the hotels ahead of time for cleanliness and safety. A definite black spot on HIMSS10.

  • Jonena,
    It was a pleasure to meet you as well. I just wish I’d had more time to stay there and chat. Too many back to backs for sure. Next HIMSS I’ll be much better prepared.

    I wish I would have known you were at the same hotel. I’d have happily escorted you to your car. Plus, it could have saved me the cab fair;-) It was a pretty sketchy part of town. When people asked what hotel I was at, I’d say the Ghetto.

  • John,
    Glad you mentioned MModal as the best technology. Completely agree! The ability to data mine physician narrative reports (whether VR, SR or traditional dictation and transcription) is huge for healthcare. Having this technology embedded into transcription platforms will give providers an easier way to gather discrete data not only to upload into EHRs but also for quality reporting requirements (core measures, P4P and meaningful use). Finally, we figured out how to “unlock” data from physicians’ dictated reports. Great solution.

  • We are a small PR firm representing clients in the small medical device field. How would we submit news, information, press releases, etc. to your site?

    Look forward to your reply.

    Gail Connors

  • Gail,
    I must admit that boiler plate press releases or things like that don’t do much for me. Mostly just get filtered. I prefer someone who understand my blog, its readers and sends me targeted information which is useful, interesting and valuable to my readers which I can easily publish. If you have something like that, you can drop me a note on my Contact Us page: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/contact-us/

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