The HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, known as HIMSS23, took place in Chicago with over 35,000 attendees and a thousand exhibitors. According to its website, “HIMSS23 unites thought leaders, disruptors and changemakers representing every sector across the global health information and technology spectrum.”
The conference featured an impressive lineup of keynote speakers ranging from Christopher J. Ross, CIO at Mayo Clinic, who spoke on responsible artificial intelligence (AI) to NFL player – and medical miracle – Damar Hamlin who presented keynote, “Winning the Game of Life.” Educational sessions covered a broad range of topics as well, including digital transformation strategies, health equity, employee engagement and retention, healthcare reform, and many more.
Medical Advantage’s Angie Howard, VP Practice Solutions, James Worsham, Director of Sales, and Michael Justice, Executive Consultant traveled to the Windy City to absorb insights and check the pulse on the status of healthcare information management systems.
Key Takeaways from HIMSS23
According to Michael, this year’s event was reminiscent of the huge, pre-COVID HIMSS gatherings that attendees enjoyed prior to the pandemic. The exhibit floor was packed with excited attendees, as were the educational sessions. The exhibit hall was alive with vibrant displays, bright faces, and many trinkets and tchotchkes for attendees.
The buzz terms for this year’s installment of HIMSS were ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). AI was a hot topic, and a few health information technology (HIT) stalwarts had announcements about generative AI including eClinicalWorks and Epic that used this opportunity to announce collaboration with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
Attendees learned that eClinicalWorks is bringing ChatGPT to the EHR, and Epic to various aspects of the application, including the EHR, plus the SlicerDicer self-service report offering. According to Michael, “It would indeed be cool to describe a report and simply have the desired output displayed – which may be coming soon for Epic users!”
The Buzz Around Networking and New Technology
The Medical Advantage team used this prime opportunity to catch up with many of its clients in attendance, industry contacts, friends, former colleagues and even competitors.
Angie noted how fun it was to learn about new products entering the industry, or new features and functions of the products consultants work with every day. Michael and Angie talked with a multitude of exhibitors, way too many to mention, but divided time among eClinicalWorks, athenahealth, Altera Digital Health (Allscripts Touchworks EHR), Epic, Oracle (Cerner), EllKay, Rhapsody, symplr, Meditech, Relatient (DASH), Health Gorilla, Veradigm (Allscripts Pro), MedeAnalytics and MyndShft.
“It was great to discuss our client’s needs, in person, with leaders at the organizations we work with every day,” said Angie Howard, VP at Medical Advantage.
Most of the exhibitors Michael and Angie caught up with were talking about core system enhancements and upcoming upgrades. Michael notes that there was lots of hype around ChatGPT, but those they spoke with felt that the prospect of the functionality to serve the needs of their organization in a meaningful way is likely to be far off in the future.
“Learning about products that can address pain points for our clients is always exciting,” said Michael Justice, Executive Consultant with Medical Advantage.
One of those companies was MyndShft, which offers an impressive, fully automated prior authorization system. Michael spoke with attendees about robotic process automation (RPA) platforms designed with healthcare in mind (especially for data security), the promise of offloading repetitive work for medical practice staff.
Many remember how the impact of COVID-19 stopped HIMSS20 in its tracks, but healthcare’s biggest IT conference is back in action. The Medical Advantage team is excited to share what they learned with clients and apply those insights to enhance our full suite of consultative and healthcare technology solutions.
