March 8, 2017
Another year, another successful HIMSS in the books! With nearly a dozen clients in attendance, our team definitely felt the #HIMSSanity! While we were at the conference staffing press meetings and attending sessions, we were able to get a good sense of the hot healthcare topics on the show floor. Following is a recap of the top four HIMSS themes, according to Aria.
Security
Security continues to be a top concern for CIOs, especially since there was a 320 percent increase in the number of healthcare providers victimized by hackers in 2016, according to CynergisTek’s report. One new tool that everyone was talking about at the show is blockchain, a tool that has the potential to keep secure data in a distributed ledger. We fully expect to see more news about the potential benefits of blockchain technology over the coming months.
Population health and precision medicine
For the past few years, population health has been a focus at HIMSS (and most other healthcare conferences)–and this year was no exception. In the era of value-based care, health systems continue to initiate population health strategies to help identify at-risk patients and therefore lower costs, improve outcomes and drive value. This year, there seemed to be an increasing focus on the next evolution of population health – precision medicine. 2bPrecise, an Aria client that made its official debut at HIMSS, is one company helping to make precision medicine a reality with its cloud-based platform focused on making genomic data actionable at the point of care.
Patient engagement and consumerism
In a value-based care world, patients are viewed as consumers and patient engagement strategies are essential as hospitals compete for business. With patients increasingly empowered to take control of their healthcare decisions, successfully engaging patients by leverage a variety of new technologies and communication methods will continue to be a key focus, as showcased by Medfusion’s recent acquisition of NexSched, the deal brings patient self-scheduling technology to Medfusion’s product suite.
MACRA
The consensus from HIMSS was that MACRA is not going away anytime soon despite the uncertainties surrounding the new administration’s healthcare plan. However, only one in three provider organizations are ready to tackle the regulation’s complex reporting requirements. It is not surprising that we saw new MACRA reporting solutions announced at show, such as SA Ignite’s IgniteMIP solutions and the launch of Integra Connect, aimed towards helping specialists navigate MACRA successfully.
Did you discuss any other trending topics at this year’s show? Let us know on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook! Be sure to check back later this week for a full round-up of February client coverage.