What We Found at This Year's HIMSS Meeting

Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
Health Information Exchanges (HIE)
National Health Information Network (NHIN).
Meaningful Use.
Stimulus Funds.

You have just saved thousands of dollars and gained most of the benefit of having attending HIMSS10, the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), whose 40,000 attendees and 800 vendors filled Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center this week.

The conversation at this year's meeting was almost completely dominated by IT vendors offering solutions that promise to usher healthcare providers into the connected era. Meaningful use of EMRs, which includes sharing patient data with other caregivers through local information exchanges and, eventually, through a national network, and win their share of $19.2 billion in stimulus funds created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Answers to a question put to every vendor interviewed gave us a picture of what is to come. "When hospitals and physicians are freely sharing patient EMRs with each other through these new information exchanges, will home care and hospice be invited to join?" The picture this year is more encouraging than last year at this time.

McKesson introduced three hospital CIOs to the press. Each spoke of using RelayHealth to ,exchange patient data interdepartmentally, including its own home health divisions.

Allscripts reports interconnectivity solutions that will allow physicians using its software to exchange patient information upline to hospitals and downward to post-acute care centers, including home health agencies. The Chicago and Raleigh-based vendor that merged with Misys Home Care in 2008 also demonstrated its renamed electronic referral system, Referral Connect formerly ECIN.

Medicity has created a platform grid capable of underlying disparate software applications and communication systems. Formerly a hospital-focused company, this new product will extend the reach of hospital and physician data to affiliated home care providers. A small communications application will allow electronic data exchange between most hospital systems and almost any home care database.

CareCentric walked across Peachtree Blvd. to construct its exhibit booth for the Atlanta meeting. Though HIMSS is traditionally lightly attended by the home care community, sales staff with the HME, home infusion and home health software vendor told us they were pleased with the traffic they saw in their corner of the massive exhibit hall.

Unotron demonstrated a washable keyboard that survives not only disinfectant sprays but full immersion in water. Surprisingly, it sells for about the same price as standard keyboards. Hewlett-Packard has picked up the keyboard in an OEM arrangement and had it on display in a tub of water in its booth. Though not practical for clinicians carrying mobile PCs outside the office, H-P and Unotron pointed out that a study conducted by the University of Arizona last year found the average office desktop was home to 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

Philips Medical, in addition to showing its familiar home telehealth system, announced during the meeting that its Respironics division's System One sleep therapy solution won the prestigious "Best Embedded End-to-End Service Award," part of the GSMA’s (the global mobile communications industry association) Embedded Mobile Competition. The machine-to-machine (M2M) system marries mobility and two-way wireless communications with sleep apnea therapy to help patients and their healthcare providers, who must meet rigorous new reporting standards. The device currently operates on the nPhase AT&T network in the U.S. and will roll out in markets around the world over the coming year.

Polycom introduced two communications systems that are worth a look. The "Converged Management Application" (CMA) Desktop™ provides PC-based video communications supporting up to 720p high definition video. When the industry is ready for such an advancement, clinicians can collaborate real-time, using images sharp enough for accurate patient assessments. The "VVS 1500"™ (pictured) is a business-class IP phone with integrated touch screen for delivering e-prescriptions, lab results and physician orders. Installed in a patient's home, it offers high-resolution, two-way video conversations but can serve as the patient's primary telephone as well.

AirWatch runs a small application that has the ability to communicate with every one of your remote PCs, PDAs and Smart Phones. It verifies their exact location, tracks login and logout times and reports a complete inventory that includes not only the unit but all of the software applications running on it. Did a nurse's teenager install a game? Was a unit lost or stolen? You will know as soon as it happens.

Absolute Software has upgraded its popular CompuTrace tracking product again. In addition to erasing sensitive data the minute a thief connects to the Internet, the anti-loss system now can prevent data access even if the thief removes a laptop hard drive and installs it into another PC.

General Electric and Intel formed an alliance last year to promote Intel's home telehealth system, the Intel Health Guide. This year, they have jointly announced that a study has begun at the Mayo Clinic to test the clinical and financial outcomes that may accrue when the telehealth device is sent home with patients upon discharge. Results can be expected in about a year.

In our next report, we will summarize keynote speeches from Dr. David Blumenthal, head of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT within HHS; Sprint CEO Dan Hesse; Philips Healthcare's Karen Golden Russell and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin.