The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida, wraps up on Friday ending a week of high-level discussions on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data governance.
The 2024 HIMSS conference brought in approximately 30,000 attendees, according to a spokesperson for the nonprofit advocacy group. This represented a drop of about 5,000 from last year’s show in Chicago.
Read more: HIMSS24: Is the industry outlook on AI maturing?
Here are six takeaways:
1. Informa brings the glitz
This was the first HIMSS event since London-based events and digital services company Informa bought the show in August. There was a notable uptick in glitz and glamour throughout the week.
The opening night party filled a large conference hall with a DJ, strobe lights, acrobats and smoke machines. HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf said experiences like that reveal how Informa might affect future shows.
“What they bring is an understanding of experience that people can have,” Wolf said. He followed by asking members of the press, “You went to the opening party? Have you seen anything like that before at HIMSS?”
Other events included a private party for VIPs at Walt Disney World Resort and a paid street party at Universal CityWalk Orlando. Booths featured puppies and mini golf. These new touches follow the lead of other healthcare events such as HLTH, which has featured DJs, air hockey tables and concerts from popular musicians.
Wolf said HIMSS and Informa will sit down in the coming weeks to discuss changes for next year’s program.
2. Epic, Oracle Health and Meditech tout AI
The top three acute care hospital electronic health record companies by market share, according to research firm KLAS, are emphasizing their strategy to use AI.
Oracle Health announced Tuesday it was rolling out a generative AI tool to help summarize patient history for care managers. The company said the functionality aims to reduce caregivers' manual chart review time and enable them to reach more patients. This service is offered in limited availability.
Meditech said its web-based Expanse EHR would integrate generative AI ambient clinical notetaking from vendors Suki, Augmedix and Nuance. The company's chief operating officer and executive vice president, Helen Waters, said in an interview APIs and collaborations with large technology companies such as Google are integral to the company's future.
Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic, said the company is bringing patient data from sites outside the hospital and specialty diagnostic devices into the clinicians’ workflow. The EHR giant has also partnered with AI-enable clinical documentation vendors including Nuance and Abridge.
“There is a new layer over the top of this healthcare ecosystem that can coordinate care while increasing safety for patients and efficiency for health systems,” said Seth Hain, Epic senior vice president of research and development.
3. Health systems give vendors a reality check
Multiple health system executives attending the show repeated a common theme: Point solution vendors will face an uphill climb in selling to them.
Point solutions are an industry term for technology vendors that address only a single problem or area within a provider's broader technology stack.
“If you don't create technologies that fit into the clinician workflow that makes sense to us, we're not going to adopt it,” said Dr. Eve Cunningham, chief of virtual care and digital health at Seattle-based Catholic health system Providence. “I think there was a lot of thought that the tech was going to come and just transform the experience of care delivery, but you have to involve the people who are actually doing the work.”
Others echoed a similar sentiment. David Linz, chief medical informatics officer at Naples, Florida-based NCH Healthcare, said the system prioritizes integration with their EHR when looking at any digital health vendor.
“The key to me is seamless integration,” Linz said. “What's really important for us is that things are sustainable. So that upgrades don't break the functionality that we have.”
4. Providers expect fewer vendors in coming years
Some providers predict the number of booths — especially among startups — could decrease in future years, given that a glut of new companies launched in the last few years.
“I think there's going to be fewer of them,” Cunningham said. “I think we're on like a gold rush right now.”
Gary Fritz, chief of applications at Stanford Healthcare, said established vendors are unlikely to go anywhere. But companies in crowded spaces, such as AI-enabled ambient clinical notetaking, may not last.
Wolf said there will be more vendors in future shows due to the mounting number of problems provider organizations are trying to solve.
5. AI conversation has matured
The conversation around providers’ use of the technology has evolved.
Stakeholder organizations like the Coalition for Health AI, an industry group that seeks to harmonize standards and reporting for health AI, are aiming to create a common testing and evolution framework that all stakeholders can use to report results.
The shifting industry mentality represents a maturity not present during last year’s conference, which occurred only a few months after OpenAI’s large language generative AI model ChatGPT was made available.
6. Change Healthcare looms large
The company's data breach, which has hobbled systems nationwide, has put even greater emphasis on the topics of cybersecurity and protecting patient data. Many attendees at the event in citing their relationship with the claims processing company owned by UnitedHealth Group, were unwilling to talk about it on the record. But it was clearly top of mind for many attendees.
“This was a little bit eye opening for folks to see how much of an impact something farther downstream that maybe you're not even thinking about can affect the industry so dramatically,” Cunningham said.
Despite the lack of candid public discourse, the topic was hanging over and on the minds of many.
