HIMSS 2010: Meaningful Use, EMR Standards, Clinician Workflows, Security, Oh My!

This year’s HIMSS was quite an active conference, with healthcare IT a national focal point with new legislation and stimulus funding being funneled into reform and modernization initiatives.

To kickoff the conference, Imprivata chief medical officer, Dr. Barry Chaiken, who is the current chair of HIMSS highlighted the need for healthcare IT solutions to drive positive industry change. Here are some pull-outs from an InformationWeek blog covering the event that capture the sentiment well:

In his opening keynote address at the conference, Dr. Barry Chaiken, HIMSS chairman and chief medical officer of Imprivata, put the onus on the industry to create 'healthcare IT solutions that are so compelling, so irresistible, that people just want to use them. We cannot rely on incentive programs or executive orders. We must create demand.'

There's a raw energy at HIMSS reminiscent of the broader IT industry's go-go days, when there were myriad vendors and incomplete standards and fractious debates and lots of customer uncertainty, but when there was an unshakeable belief that IT could still change the world.

In his opening address, Dr. Chaiken captured that vibe, calling on the HIMSS membership to rise to the challenge. 'Through the implementation of compelling healthcare IT solutions, you must transform the way healthcare is provided in this country, not the president, not Congress, not clinicians--you. If you don't do it, it will not happen. You must step forward and you must lead.'

At Imprivata’s booth, we had a constant flow of booth traffic, and we received great response to our interactive theater demonstrations – people loved watching our folks act out real-world scenarios vs. watching a canned demo loop on a monitor. Having a live operational system at the booth allowed us to explore details of the product with customers and prospects with specific questions.

People were especially excited about our OneSign Secure Walk-Away solution for protecting unattended hospital workstations from unauthorized access, and Privacy Alert spurred a lot of interest and engaging conversations with IT and Privacy executives alike. There were lots of high-energy discussions, mostly centered around definitions of meaningful use, EMR interoperability and the creation/non-existence of standards, clinical workflows, healthcare access management and data security breach issues – and more than few jabs on the outcome of the Olympics!

This set the tone for the entire conference, and everyone contributed to a great gathering focused on pushing industry progress forward – presenters, vendors and attendees alike. At Imprivata, we’re coming away from HIMSS 2010 energized for what the future holds in healthcare. We’re ready to make a difference. Are you?