Each year at the HIMSS Conference and Expo, there are
hundreds of educational sessions, which are grouped into categories. Last year I attempted to analyze trends based on which categories
gained or lost prominence compared to the previous year. Unfortunately, the
categories themselves changed significantly from 2015 to 2016, making a direct
comparison difficult. However, there’s good news for 2017; the categories have
not been shuffled around to the same extent as last year, meaning that a change
in popularity for a category truly represents a trend.
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Privacy and Security
This year the top category is Privacy, Security and
Cybersecurity. This is up from the number 3 position last year, compared with
number 6 in 2015. It’s clearly trending upward for good reason. The number of
cybersecurity incidents is growing every year.
It’s a topic that needs a lot of attention and requires
immediate action.
Care Coordination, Culture of Care and Population Health
This category was tied for first place last year, and even
though the number of sessions in this category is up from 29 to 32, it places second
this year. As EHR implementation projects wind down and new programs like MIPS
and MACRA ramp up, the sustained focus on population health makes perfect
sense.
Health Information Exchange, Interoperability and Data
Access
This topic jumps four spots to number 3 this year,
demonstrating the importance of establishing interoperability as well as
deriving value from interoperable systems. Interoperability is a perennial hottopic because even though industry is starting to get a handle on
the problem, there are always new systems and data sources to integrate with
the existing information ecosystem. As long as the industry continues to
innovate new systems and use cases, HIMSS attendees will demand educational
sessions about interoperability.
Quality and Patient Safety Outcomes
Quality outcomes climbed from number 10 to number 6 this
year, but it’s surprising that it didn’t advance even more. With MIPS and MACRA
coming in the near future, it would seem like a category that deserves a lot of
attention.
Process Improvement, Workflow and Change Management
This category was tied for first place last year, but
plummeted to number 10 in 2017. This is perhaps due to the fact that most
hospitals have completed their ICD 10 and EHR projects, so there are fewer
processes and workflow changes pressuring IT departments.
EHRs
In a related vein, the topic of EHRs is now last on the
list, again reflecting the fact that EHRs are now widely implemented.
An Industry in Transition
Whenever the goal is to improve processes through data
analysis, the first step is always to capture the foundational transactions
electronically, then implement systems to analyze the transactional data and
determine where and what to improve.
In healthcare, the core transactions are patient encounters,
which are captured in an EHR. Analysis and quality measurement happen in
population health systems, and process improvements follow from there. Based on
the fact that demand for educational sessions about EHRs has waned and
population health is on the rise, we can conclude that the first phase is
complete and, as an industry, we are moving into the second phase. We’re climbing
the value ladder from simply capturing transactions electronically in EHRs to
analyzing them and making improvements based on the analysis. As the value of
our electronic data assets increases, so does the need to ensure their
interoperability and security.
In my opinion, the breakdown and trends of the HIMSS17
educational sessions accurately reflects what is happening in healthcare IT
right now.
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