Last Thursday, the New England HIMSS Chapter gathered at Gillette Stadium, home of the 5 time Superbowl Champion New England Patriots, for it’s Annual Spring Conference. The day provided insights, technology, strategy and networking. The theme for the conference was “Innovation: The Key to a Transformed Health System,” and topics for the day included:

• The Power of Empowering Patients Through Mobile Technology
• Big Data Interoperability: Connecting Administrative, Clinical, and Patient-Generated Data
• Innovations in Care Delivery

Below are the top takeaways and impressions from the event:

1. To achieve transparency & trust in healthcare, we need to insulate patients from the logistics.

Need to hide the logistics of healthcare. Hide the dirty laundry. Enhance #PatientExperience #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/yAflh937dF

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

2. To achieve simplification in healthcare, we should collect only the data we need.

How does healthcare collect only the data needed? How do we know what is needed? Deborah Theobald #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/KL8htoa1ie

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

3. The future of healthcare delivery likely resides in virtual visits.

50 million Americans are willing to switch PCPs for video visits. This is the future of healthcare delivery #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/yuushev6Gh

— Irene Chen (@msirenechen) May 11, 2017

4. Value-based reimbursement & need for cost savings are driving patient engagement.

Seth Bokser, MD speaking on the drivers of patient engagement #NEHIMSS17 @NewEnglandHIMSS pic.twitter.com/fomdOBBwxM

— Paige Polak (@ppolak245) May 11, 2017

5. Patient engagement is more than a patient portal, it’s a team sport.

#PatientEngagement is a team sport #CareCoordination. It's more than a patient portal. #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/4xy8JCmaMU

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

6. Under the new administration, deregulation will foster innovation.

Via video, Dr. John Halamka on #HealthIT under new admin.: #Deregulation will foster #innovation #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/guKGnNqRBF

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

7. Providers aren’t programmers and don’t want to have to write code to implement logic for clinical decision support.

Dr. T. Billingsley: Providers aren't programmers; don't want to write code to implement logic for #CDS #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/MhrF5wAV79

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

8. Boston Children’s innovates by spending time on data sets that don’t require consent through web-scraping & partnerships with companies like Google.

@johnbrownstein using big data to provide awareness of disease, public illness and even sleep problems thru @healthmap #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/cFFgIG5C0r

— New England HIMSS (@NewEnglandHIMSS) May 11, 2017

9. There is an opportunity to engage with healthcare consumers through compelling UI.

"Opportunity to engage with #Healthcare consumer through compelling #UI." –@johnbrownstein via #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/m1eiwDvRiI

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

10. Monitor & leverage unstructured data from social media to build a new taxonomy for population health management.

Monitor & take unstructured data from #SM to build a new taxonomy for #PHM –@johnbrownstein via #NEHIMSS17 pic.twitter.com/zv2kBV3OTZ

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 11, 2017

In summary, the event proved to be insightful, informative, and inspirational, highlighting innovation that is occurring surrounding the shift to value-based care, the complexity of healthcare, and patient engagement. It’s clear that there is no shortage of work to do in healthcare IT in order to support organizational drivers such as improved outcomes and reduced costs.