Highlights from the Digital Healthcare Conference

Jim Whelan

The Digital Healthcare Conference 2010 occurred last week in Madison, WI, under the theme of “Healthcare IT in transition.” Imprivata Chief Medical Officer Dr. Barry P. Chaiken served as the conference chair for this event, which boasted an impressive agenda that kicked off with KLAS Founder and Chairman Kent Gale exploring the obstacles to physician adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs). Gale’s “Top Ten” list highlighted common things that stand in the way of EMR adoption, and the takeaway from the entire session aimed to get attendees to see how establishing transparent workflow can lead to physicians truly embracing EMRs.

A large focus of the event centered on the intersection of clinical workflows and Healthcare IT (HIT) where providing fast EMR access and protecting patient privacy served as topical pillars for the sessions as well as the conversations happening in the hallway.

A couple other sessions worth noting:

  • “Keynote: Clinical Governance” Dr. Thomas J. Handler, MD, Research Director, Gartner Inc. examined the role of clinical governance in establishing HIT system selection and deployment success criteria, and proposed a structure to establish a better model for clinical governance.
  • “Keynote: What do Patients Want?” Deborah C. Peel, MD, President, Patient Privacy Rights, exposed the need for patient data security to prevent inappropriate access of personal health information in a world fast moving to digital records.
  • “Return on Investment with Clinical Information Systems – An Oxymoron?” Dick Gibson, Former Senior VP and CIO, Legacy Health provided a detailed presentation on how to drive financial benefit from clinical information systems including a prescription of best practices and methodologies to obtain maximum ROI measurement and benefit.

Overall, the event was extremely well-run and every presenter kept to their time allotment, ensuring plenty of Q&A time for the audience. In addition, the presenters and keynoters all were highly active in Q&A outside of their own specific presentations, injecting great energy and insight throughout the two-day conference.

The entire agenda for the event is available online, and many of the presenters have made their presentations available via downloadable PDF. If you were there, what did you take away from the event?