Newcomers to Health Information Technology

After 9 years of attending the annual HIMSS event, I’m still amazed by the overwhelming number of Health IT solutions concentrated into a tradeshow floor. While the Orlando Convention Center offered plenty of space for the 900 exhibiting companies and over 28,000 attendees, there simply was not enough time to explore the inviting booths and thoughtfully displayed wares. Outside of the tradeshow floor, attendees were engrossed in carefully selected educational sessions and keynote presentations, in order to better understand the challenges and solutions to healthcare information management.

In our early years, MEDSEEK was in a 10’ x10” booth, hidden in the far corners of the convention hall. Ultimately we graduated to a 10’ x 20’, and finally this year we showed off an impressive 40’ x 40’ aisle booth, complete with model home and office healthcare IT access. Traffic and demos were our metrics of success, but this year offered another level of engagement…unabashed business networking with partners and financiers. Gone were the logo-golf shirts and gimmicky give-aways; this year was suit and tie, with set appointments.

Meanwhile, sequestered in a low-rent aisle, there was a scantily decorated 10’ x 20’ booth where crowds strained around a group of techies showing off Google’s new health record on a few 20” screens. No fancy displays, no suited salesmen, no flashing logo pens…just some Google stickers to glue on your car window to show that you, too, believe in this brand.  And this, I believe, was the most disruptive technology on the floor.

The reactions were predictable: Google is for advertising; no way is my medical information going online; what if the security systems are hacked.  Pam Dixon, executive director of the nonprofit World Privacy Forum, is not at all comfortable taking sensitive health care information outside of the healthcare sector. HIPAA, once the evil acronym for burdensome privacy regulations, now is the healthcare industry’s shield of protection for innocent consumers.

So who then is to be trusted as the repository for patient health information? Insurance companies? Employers? Hospitals? Pharmacies? Microsoft? Google? How about the government? 

Perhaps the answer lies in the patients themselves, as in the end, they will vote with their personal health records. They will begin to use the FREE offered tools, and depending on ease of use, availability, personal need and perceived trustworthiness, patients will find places from which to share their data. Some, especially the young and healthy, will go where they spend most of their time anyway, namely Web 2.0. Most likely, privacy will not seem as important as giving those who need information a simple way to get to it. This generation, weaned on Google and living on FaceBook, will push the borders of the “healthcare sector” into the realms where they already freely exchange information. 

So as the traditional HIT companies like SCI Solutions and Cerner leave HIMSS, new players will fill the vacuum. Companies that today may look more like eBay, Yelp, CareSeek and MySpace may just be the next occupants of those fancy plots at the nation’s largest healthcare solutions exhibition.