Blumenthal HIMSS Address Should Prove Meaningless

I’m preparing for my time at the HIMSS conference. I can tell that the conference is going to be incredibly busy. Plus, I don’t want to over schedule my time since I want to make sure I spend plenty of time discovering new things and smaller companies that are doing really interesting things. Specially related to EMR is best, but even the technologies that make EMR better are great too.

Well, I got an email from HIMSS about one of the keynote speakers. When I looked at the subject line I read “Blumenthal HIMSS Address Should Prove Meaningless.” At first I didn’t realize the email was from HIMSS. I then came to the email again and realized that I’d misread it. The email actually said, “Blumenthal HIMSS Address Should Prove Meanignful.”

Well, I couldn’t help the irony of the misread. Blumenthal has a chance on a pretty large stage to make some important statements. I am interested to hear what he says. I have a philosophy to listen to smart people when they talk. That’s why I loved the chance to hear Marc Probst (HIT Policy Committee and CIO of IHC) and that’s why I plan to listen to Blumenthal. In many respects, Blumenthal holds the keys to billions of dollars in EMR stimulus money. Let’s hope he will provide something meaningful, but I’m not holding my breathe.

As a side note, I’ll be covering my time at HIMSS on this site and on EMR and HIPAA. I’m also hosting a couple meetups at HIMSS which I’ll be announcing tomorrow or the next day.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

8 Comments

  • John, you state it will be meaningless and that you won’t hold your breath, but you don’t really state why. What’s the beef?

  • Mike,
    Good question. I don’t think I unequivocally state that it will be meaningless. I state that I think it likely will be, but I’ll be there to find out. Plus, I stated that I think he’s a smart guy with a lot of power.

    Ok, that part aside. The reason I think it could be meaningless is for a number of reasons. First, he’s a government worker and might not be able to speak as frank as we’d like him to speak (and probably he’d like to speak). I’m not sure muzzle is the right term, but gets close. Second, if he just repeats what we already know and have heard, then it will be essentially “meaningless.”

    I do hope that I’m wrong.

  • John,
    I believe that Dr. Blumenthal is a forward thinking, caring professional who could benefit from listening to people from all areas in the EMR field.

    As a concerned citizen, I hope that he (or someone in his office) is following your blogs. And, I hope they will invite you to a panel discussion the very near future. That would be an excellent way to generate a significant ROI with some of ARRA funds.

    Does anyone else feel the same way?

  • I think Dr. Blumenthal is going to nail this keynote. And yes, ONC monitors the blogosphere along with reading all official public comments. John, we are convening a “Costs and Benefits of HIT” panel at HIMSS and will keep you in mind.

  • Mike,
    Here’s my short summary from my other site:
    The day started with the Blumenthal keynote. I can’t say that he really said anything earth shattering. It was a bit interesting to hear an overview of his perspectives. However, my favorite part of his speech was his opening story about how he got involved in healthcare IT and the time when he was a doctor and his EMR saved him from making a major medical mistake. It was really smart of him to tell a story like this. He also had some really good one liners (see my twitter accounts) that indicate his goals. So, I guess the David Blumenthal HIMSS keynote wasn’t completely meaningless.

    Here’s a link to my twitter account for the live reaction: http://twitter.com/ehrandhit

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories