The Inaugural Health IT Expo lived up to its promise in facilitating collaboration for practical healthcare information technology application and innovation. Health IT conferences are intended for hospital and health system CIOs to convene and discuss best practices for tackling the tough challenges they face. Unfortunately, it has become more and more difficult for CIOs and their teams to cut through all the noise at traditional industry conferences to find solutions that fit their organization’s needs. However, some may be suspect and feel that adding another healthcare conference simply adds to the noise. Conference founder, John Lynn, correctly identified there was a need to not simply add-on, but to differentiate:

Many conferences are so large that the medium sized vendors that are really innovating and providing effective results get drowned out by the behemoth companies who suck all the air out of the room. Other conferences feature startup companies that are so new that they’re not yet actionable for a hospital or health system to implement.

While both extremes have their place in healthcare, we created Health IT Expo to focus on the middle of the hospital and health system market which doesn’t have massive innovation groups in their organization, but is ready to invest in new technologies and solutions which can provide better care, lower costs, increase efficiencies, and/or increase revenues

This philosophy was echoed in the keynote session to kick-off the conference:

"We didn't want to create just any conference, we want to create a community" @techguy #HITExpo It's about helping each other succeed. pic.twitter.com/zDCmdxQlQA

— Colin Hung (@Colin_Hung) May 31, 2018

Another “Core principle of #HITExpo” Give before you get. pic.twitter.com/t9oGTkvcRT

— Amanda (@LAlupusLady) June 1, 2018

Rocking the #HITExpo stage @ShahidNShah w/ innovative ideas impacting one patient at a time. pic.twitter.com/8GJJ3NEmhB

— Amanda (@LAlupusLady) June 1, 2018

The differentiation of Health IT Expo was evidenced in discussions of sharing of clinical decision support among healthcare delivery organizations with different EHRs, approaches to internal and external interoperability, best practices for optimizing patient identity and matching, and how to rationalize the EHR investment through user behavioral analytics and telemetry. Combine the in-person collaboration with the social presence that followed, and the event was truly a resounding success in not just hand-waving, but identification of actionable activities healthcare delivery organizations can start today.

Some initial @healthitexpo social numbers: 3,802 Tweets. 564 Participants. 22,096,213 Impressions. And my favorite stat 7 tweets per person on average. #ThatsEngagement More #HITExpo 📊 here https://t.co/kPMVNtbYfC Not bad for the inaugural event!

— John Lynn (@techguy) June 2, 2018

The event started with the live-streaming of three Think Tank sessions. These sessions served to extend overall conference value beyond those in attendance and to create an on-going post-conference collaboration.

Going Beyond EHR’s

Practical Innovation

Communication & Patient Engagement

What follows-below are our top impressions, sound-bytes and insights regarding the key themes of the conference.

Interoperability

#HITExpo @LAlupusLady has to solve her own #Interoperability issues by acting as her own #HIE. #Ridiculous

— Jeremy Coleman (@jeremycoleman) May 31, 2018

Study by @BlackBookMedia_ shows 18% duplicate records in health systems per #EMPI panel at #HITExpo. Cost is ~1.2MM annually #EmpowerHIT #Interoperability pic.twitter.com/SruAw5eTTq

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 31, 2018

#HITExpo @RasuShrestha and Paul Black say that #interop has been solved. Funny the market says something else. Plus, why don't they talk about how much that costs? How to community hosp's afford 7 figure #Interoperability

— Jeremy Coleman (@jeremycoleman) June 1, 2018

Given unique patient population with a large amount of out-of-towners and out-of-staters, Ryan Thousand of @vailhealth shares his #Interoperability strategy is broken into national, regional, and local. Fax is leveraged frequently at local with #Clinics #HITExpo #HIE pic.twitter.com/ZDDCVI2uEd

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 31, 2018

Analytics

This was one of my big take-aways from attending #HIMSS18 … we can make #bigdata small and actionable … #HITexpo https://t.co/XCwCVSkpJH

— Sean Erreger, LCSW (@StuckonSW) June 1, 2018

#HITExpo with @AlgorexHealth Discussing real world uses for social determinants of health pic.twitter.com/0wAmfoBUEe

— Jacquelyn Crane (@JaxCrane) May 31, 2018

Operational Alignment & Support

A comprehensive roadmap of the stages of contact center maturity, and features to roll out at each level. Love the detail @burwoodHIT team 👏🏻 very actionable #HITExpo pic.twitter.com/ycIgvQS20w

— Colleen Barry (@colleenkbarry) May 31, 2018

Communication & Patient Engagement

Hospital CEOs expect consumerism to be 50% of their strategic focus within 3-5 years #HITExpo #PatientExperience pic.twitter.com/1aB2RMGxGg

— Colleen Barry (@colleenkbarry) May 31, 2018

Why is the focus on building waterfalls at the hospital when we have bigger issues like clinical burnouts – @GraceCordovano. The other lens is the waterfalls draws and attracts potential patients from a marketing standpoint. What is the right aproach? 🤷‍♂️ #HITExpo

— David Chou (@dchou1107) May 31, 2018

Patients are repeatedly & regularly referred to as consumers.
Majority of conversations at #HITexpo define the customer as healthcare organizations & payers. This is a critically important to emphasize. Are we really delivering patient-centered care? 🤔

— Enlightening Results (@GraceCordovano) June 1, 2018

IT Dev Ops

Gearing up for a robust discussion on pragmatic and practical clinical data archival approaches by @THINKFR33LY, @GalenHealthcare at #HITExpo pic.twitter.com/2cjieE7UWR

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 31, 2018

Commonly missed data sets in archival include metadata, links to ancilllary systems (PACS)and UI indicators (flag to indicate drug dosage checking was performed). These don’t show up in CCD or PDF printout. @THINKFR33LY @GalenHealthcare #HITExpo pic.twitter.com/lx32eHjAAh

— Justin Campbell (@tjustincampbell) May 31, 2018

Security

“If you’re going to do one thing and one thing only, implement two-factor authentication coming into your organization” – Scott Raymond on creating his current healthcare security posture #HITExpo #CyberSecurity pic.twitter.com/Jrpeg8sQWv

— Colleen Barry (@colleenkbarry) May 31, 2018

Many thanks to the conference organizers for their tireless work in making the event a success, and to the sponsors who made the collaboration possible.

As we start the main day of #HITExpo Conference a big THANK YOU to all our sponsors – without their support this event would not be possible. pic.twitter.com/dkCOJS8JrN

— Health IT Expo (@HealthITExpo) May 31, 2018