Last week, I wrote about Margalit Gur-Arie’s idea for a national health data repository. Commenters, including Gur-Arie, had some great comments. And one of the things that came out of that post was that if there is ever a community run national database, I would happily log my health data into it, and maybe do it for my parents and kids as well. But I don’t really have a great track record of health-logging. I’m not a Quantified Self afficionado, I don’t even check my weight on a regular enough basis. Having my husband photograph me and gauging my weight by the relative puffiness of my cheeks is what constitutes a weight check in my universe. So what are the odds of me going through piles of paper records and typing it all up for a UHR? Slim to none, but a girl can still dream.

Wired published an article late last month on How to Use Tech to Track Your Health, just for people like me. Don’t worry, assures the article, self-logging ain’t that hard, it’s probably so easy even a cavewoman can do it.

Now, just because the article is on Wired doesn’t mean it comes with awesome pedigree and stellar writing. People, it’s 2012, not 1992. If I hear about one more app that sends you text reminders about getting your annuals done, I’m going to barf. Ditto for those tired ovulation trackers. I don’t know who I blame more. the tech companies that come up with these novel solutions after every iPhone developer and their mother has already created a dozen apps and websites around the idea, or the Wired writer who thought it was newsworthy enough to include in her round-up of the most happening ideas. Either way, I don’t care. I don’t want to know about any more reminder and calendar apps, not unless this magical app connects me directly to someone like Simon Cowell or Idris Elba (ok, I have a thing or two for Brit accents). See, there’s a business idea for you – have celebrities become our health coaches and cheerleaders. Some of us might be ready to pay for the privilege.

There are the usual sleep-pattern analyzer apps and personal sleep coaches that help you get a good night’s worth.

Kvetching aside, not everything in the Wired article sounded like it was floated circa the 1900s. I quite liked reading about the BodyMedia biometric patch that apparently works like one of those ciggie patches, and logs your sleep, heart rate etc for upto a week. It is intended to be used a week prior to your appointments, presumably so you can bombard your doctor with the aforesaid minutiae. I also liked the Moodscope idea – you can go to the Moodscope website and play a game, and your reponses to the game are used to gauge your mood. I can imagine how useful that could be to people who might be prone to depression or who want to chart what external stresses produce what reactions in them.

I haven’t used any of the apps or gadgets mentioned in the article, so I’m just reacting at a very surface level to the idea behind the product/service. And your mileage may, of course, vary.

Check it out here.

In the past, I’ve written volumes about hospital attempts to lock in doctors by offering them access to a free or deeply-discounted EMR. I haven’t heard much about this strategy of late — either the approach was dropped or it’s gone underground — but it seems that other players are still giving it a shot.

This time, in what seems to be a fairly logical step, Quest Diagnostics has kicked off a program offering medical practices a steep 85 percent discount off of the retail price of its Care360 EMR and practice management bundle.  The announcement follows up on its 2011 regional giveaway program, which Quest says attracted thousands of physicians.

The deal, which reduces the physicians’ out of pocket cost to less than $100 per month,  also includes training, hosting, maintenance and 24/7 support for Care360. The lab giant says physicians can get Care360 up and running in about 45 days.

I can’t think of a reason why this wouldn’t make great sense for Quest; if my contacts are to be believed, it has no better reputation than its key competitors when it comes to customer service and follow-through on clinical testing.

On the other hand, if I were a doctor I’d think long and hard before agreeing to a deal like this, even though the software is just about free. There’s simply too much at stake to plunge in.

Yes, Care360 is CCHIT certified and, intriguingly, has incorporated the Direct Project specs allowing doctors to share information with patients and hospitals. And yes, it seems to have made efforts to support EMR access via mobile devices. This is all good. And of course, the price is right.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d want to make this big of a commitment to any particular service provider, be it a reference lab, a radiology provider or the people who stock my vending machines with sodas.

I’d argue that the more important the service is, the less you want to be beholden to the vendor. After all,what if Care360 isn’t your cup of tea?  Do you really want to disrupt your relationship with a critical provider like Quest?

Not only that, it’s risky to lock in an EMR just because it’s cheap. If Care360 takes 45 days to get installed, it’s not going to be possible to uninstall it in a day or two, and that could mean misery on wheels if the product doesn’t work for you.

Besides, it’s possible to get Web-based, easy to adopt or drop EMRs for only a couple hundred dollars a month more. It wouldn’t make sense to go for an EMR that might not work just to save that little. (If your margin is tight enough that a savings of $200 or $300 a month is critical, you have worse problems than finding the right EMR!)

I guess I’m saying that even if the EMR is nearly free, caveat emptor. You don’t want to get saddled with an albatross system just because the price was right.

While there’s a number of  large, publicly-traded EMR vendors out there — General Electric (NASDAQ: GE) and Cerner (NASDAQ: CERN) immediately come to mind — to date we haven’t seen many mid-sized or small companies kick off an initial public offering. But one medium-sized EMR/practice management vendor has broken the mold.

Today, Greenway Medical Technologies (NASDAQ: GWAY) took the plunge , pulling in $67 million to fund its operations. While the company had hoped to raise $100 million, its take is nothing to sneeze at. Health IT is a tricky investment, even for pros like yourselves, readers, and institutional investors in particular are a conservative bunch. The fact that they’re spending on a risky business means a lot.

Greenway, whose EMR is bundled with practice management software, had one heck of a ride today, with its stock climbing 30 percent during its first day of trading. The company sold 6.7 million shares at prices below its expected $11 to $13 range, diluting its intake somewhat, but the stock closed at a promising $13 per share.

The Carrollton, Ga.-based vendor has certainly done well in recent times. According to insider Wall Street blog Seeking Alpha, Greenway revenues shot up 55 percent, to $25.7 million, during the last quarter of operations. Operating margins went from negative to a positive 2 percent, which is at least a start.  Its biggest cash generator during the quarter was licensing revenue, which climbed 49 percent.

What’s interesting about this IPO isn’t just the fact that it ended well for Greenway. After all, it did take in less than planned, and the Wall Street crowd justifiably wonders how it will fare in a mind-boggling competitive market.  But it’s worth asking whether Greenway did better because it bundles both an EMR and practice management tools. Did the fact that Greenway wasn’t relying solely on EMR revenue contribute to its growth and financial success?  It would be interesting to find out, as that might help predict whether the bundled model is especially popular with physicians.

As for those who’d seek to imitate Greenway, they may have a chance if they move soon. Seeking Alpha editors think HITECH will still pump enough money into the EMR market to make these companies a reasonable investment. And given how many doctors and hospitals are still struggling to put EMRs in place, I have to agree.  In fact, given that an amazing number of hospitals and medical practices junk their first EMR, there may be a whole second wave of opportunity within three to five years.

All told, if the market’s response to a smallish IPO is any indication, you can expect a bunch of other EMR players to follow in its footsteps.  I’m thinking it will be companies in the $100m to $200m range, as they’re small enough to need capital (much cheaper capital than banks offer these days!) and nimble enough to benefit from the cash influx. Stay tuned and in coming months, I’ll tell you which other EMR and HIT companies I’m betting will climb onto the launch pad.

Could a single, mammoth database solve all our health data needs? Margalit Gur-Arie, whose writing and ideas I greatly admire, has been arguing for one quite passionately on her personal blog in a couple of recent posts (part I, part II).

The crux of her posts is this:
- There should be a single, standardized national database to which physician practises, and ultimately EMR vendors, must submit mandatory data, “in real time”. The requirements will be along the lines of current Meaningful Use requirements.
- This database will be accessible to vendors and entrepreneurs alike, and can have multiple EHRs or apps built atop them.
- Since the patient data is available, and easily accessible (no one “owns” the data, they only own the proprietary bells and whistles they perform on the data), this is a near perfect patient utopia.

It’s a great idea and perfect for an ideal world. Except:
- Massive databases cause massive headaches, as commenter Omowizard pointed out. There is a price to pay for data available at all times, all places, and by everyone. And if I may add, in Gur-Arie’s model, it’s not clear who’s left holding the bag. Presumably the government. Which opens a entirely different can of worms about data ownership.
- Real time updates of data is no joke. At my current place of work, we perform quasi-real time (twice daily) updates of patient visits to client databases from a central repository. The sheer volume is enough to bring down the database servers for a good hour or two.
- We haven’t been able to agree on a standardized schema passed for a healthcare database. What are the odds of this idea ever catching on?
- How are we going to mandate data population? After physicians and care organizations, will EMR vendors be the next recipients of government bribes/largesse/sops to induce them to populate the database?
- Gur-Arie herself points out that American enterprise being what it is, if there are no financial benefits to data ownership, they’re going to be a hard sell.

And while it’s easy for me to write a smart alecky blog post about the infeasibility of the mammoth database idea, I shudder when I think of what we have now: disjoint EHRs that don’t “speak” to one another, walled gardens and proprietary ownership of data that pretty much lock physician office in, PHR offerings from companies like Microsoft who will do God knows what with OUR health data.

I don’t think there are any easy answers. I’m leaning more towards an open source health “OS” platform rather than a single database. But at the very least, Gur-Arie offers some great food for thought.

Here’s an EMR adoption study which interested me largely because it runs counter to what I would have predicted.  The study, which surveyed physicians pre- and post- EMR implementation, found that doctors who owned a stake in their practice found their rollout to be tougher than physicians who didn’t have a stake.

I don’t know about you, but I would have assumed that the folks with more control — the owners — would have found it easier than those who have to adapt to the decisions others make.  But it seems that physician-owners simply feel the pain of change more acutely.

To conduct the study, which was published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association,  researchers surveyed 156 physicians working with the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative.  The surveys included a pre-implementation questionnaire  in 2005 and a post-implementation questionnaire in 2009.

Thirty-five percent of doctors who responded reported that implementation was very difficult, 54 percent said it was somewhat difficult and 12 percent not difficult. Those numbers square pretty well with what I’ve seen elsewhere. The twist here was that 38 percent of physicians with full or partial ownership stakes in their practices voted “very difficult,” versus 27 percent of non-owners. That surprised me. After all, aren’t most of the complaints coming from doctors who try to use the new systems?

According to Marshall Fleurant, MD, one of the study’s authors, the owners “probably experienced more underlying challenges associated with EHR implementation and workflow transformation” given their broader operational responsibilities.

While this study is interesting, it’s hardly the last word. Teasing out just which factors predict how doctors will react to EMR implementation, much less what it takes to support them, is still a new science.  But it never hurts to bear in mind that physicians making critical management decisions get support, too.

Here is a quick look at some of the other articles recently posted on some of the other HealthcareScene.com websites:

EHR and EMR Videos
Software Demo of ADP AdvancedMD + EMA Ophthalmology
This medical billing and EHR software demo presents how medical practices can use ADP AdvancedMD as their practice management to collect more money, faster. EMA for ophthalmology helps doctors utilize an iPad to manage clinical charting and see more patients faster. A software bridge (data integration) has been built to help staff work faster without doing double data entry.

HIMSS Analytics: Data, Research and Consulting for Healthcare IT

Gain a deeper, more vibrant understanding of the HIT space through HIMSS Analytics. Knowing who needs what, when they need it and who to contact will enable you to sell proactively to receptive customers. Our market intelligence will help you optimize your marketing and sales strategies to advance the future of healthcare.

Steve Hinajosa Explains Advantages of DocBook MD 3.0

Travis County Medical Society Membership Director, Steven Hinojosa explains why local county Medical Societies should be interested in DocBookMD 3.0.

EHR and EMR Screenshots

The links below represent screenshots from the Care360 EHR/EMR including images from the EHR, the iPad app, and the mobile app.  Do you think it is necessary for EHRs to use multiple platforms for access, or is it unnecessary vanity?

Screenshots from the Care360 EHR/EMR

iPad App Screenshots from the Care360 EHR/EMR

Care360 EHR/EMR Mobile App Screenshots

Smart Phone Health Care

Consult A Doctor Offers 24/7 Flu Hotline That Costs Less than $40

Flu season is generally miserable for everyone.  Even if you don’t actually get sick you spend half your time avoiding the people who are sick.  Then you start to get symptoms but you wait as long as humanly possible to actually see a doctor because it is so expensive and time-consuming.  Consult A Doctor is releasing a new service designed to change all of that.

Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize Offering $10 Million Prize to Developers

We all remember those awesome little tricorders from the Star Trek series that could analyze a person’s level of health almost immediately.  All the doctor had to do was push a button and he immediately knew exactly what he needed to do to help the person.

Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation have announced a development competition designed to create just such a device.  The two CEO’s of the respective companies, Dr. Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm Foundation Chair and Qualcomm Incorporated Chairman and CEO, and X PRIZE Foundation Chairman and CEO Dr. Peter Diamandis, announced during the keynote address at CES that the prize would be $10 million dollars.

I’m sure that some of you might have seen me complaining on Twitter about the challenge of trying to sift through the 300+ educational sessions at HIMSS. I even tried to convince the HIMSS expert Neil Versel to offer up some suggestions on which HIMSS 2012 sessions to attend. He suggested just leaving all of the education times open and decide later. It’s a good idea, but I think I prefer meeting with people more than some of the available sessions. Neil enjoys the sessions a bit more than I do.

One of my favorite old Neil Versel posts was when he basically said, “HIMSS is more than just the exhibit hall.” With 300+ sessions at HIMSS 2012 there should be something you will find interesting, so HIMSS should be more than just the exhibit hall.

Today I started ripping through the HIMSS sessions to try and identify those I found interesting and worth putting on my schedule. While they might make it on the schedule, that doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily attend. I debate attending based on the flow of the conference, people I’m with at the time, and if I’d already heard enough on that subject for one HIMSS. Plus, I often put multiple sessions that are at the same time on my schedule. In those cases, I use the above criteria to decide which ones I should attend.

The other X Factor with this all is that I still have to schedule my meetings with vendors I find interesting during HIMSS as well. I’ll start doing that now that I know which HIMSS sessions are happening when. At least now I won’t schedule a meeting with a vendor during the Biz Stone keynote. That would be a travesty.

Below you’ll find my HIMSS 2012 schedule of sessions (which will likely continue to change), but for those interested here’s the process I did to find interesting sessions. First, I added the exhibit hall hours and keynotes. Next, I went through the HIMSS Specialty Programs and HIMSS Social Media Center schedule (My HIMSS Panel on Wed, 2/24 from 4-5 made it on my schedule from this list). Then, the HIMSS Education section has the sessions broken out into “Core Education” areas. I found the Federal Participation at HIMSS 12, Senior Executive sessions and EHR Best Practices sections quite interesting.

There you have it. I’m sure I missed some sessions I should attend, so if you know of some that you think are worthwhile do let me know and I’ll check them out. Now without further ado, my current schedule for HIMSS 2012:

As you can see it’s going to be a full and crazy week for me at HIMSS 2012, but as I said before HIMSS is great for me. Everyone goes there with a little different plan on what they want to accomplish and learn, but hopefully my list of sessions will be helpful to someone else navigating the HIMSS 2012 gauntlet.

Let me know if you have any questions about particular sessions and I’m happy to tell you why they made the list as well.

Recent news that Kaiser Permanente has made its patients’ electronic health records available via mobile devices comes as no surprise. Kaiser often seems to be at the forefront of interoperability and coordinated care, in large part due to its integrated nature and sheer volume of patients. As the company’s press release mentions, it maintains the “largest electronic medical records system in the world.” Now, 9 million of its patients can view their EHRs via a mobile site or Android app, with an iPhone app expected to launch in the near future.

On a macro level, I think this is a great step towards further empowering patients to take control of their health. By giving 9 million folks instant access to their own health information, I’d like to think that this will in turn prompt their friends and relations to ask, “Why doesn’t my doctor do that? What benefits am I missing out on?” And perhaps these same folks will then have a conversation with their provider about adopting this type of mobile access.

I’d be interested to see six months to a year from now, statistics comparing use of the mobile app/site to use of the tools found on the traditional website. Will Kaiser see a tremendous increase in the amount of emails between doctors and patients via its mobile apps? Are its doctors prepared for the potential onslaught of correspondence? I wonder if a few have balked at the possibility of being overrun by emails from particularly communicative patients.

Will they be able to tie these usage statistics to a jump in quality outcomes? Will mobile access ultimately become a criteria measured within accountable care models or patient-centered medical homes? Will mobile health truly equal better health?

On a micro level, I would certainly appreciate the effectiveness of access like this, which includes the ability to view lab results, diagnostic information, order prescription refills and the aforementioned email access to doctors. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on the phone with a pediatric advice nurse and drawn a blank when asked what my child’s current weight might be. It would be nice to be able to quickly pull that data up on my cell phone, especially while we’re on the go or out of town. I could eventually see patient charting apps being layered on top of this, so that in the event of a high, overnight fever, I could log temperatures via the mobile app and review them with our pediatrician – possibly alerted every time a new temp or symptom is entered – the next morning.

The possibilities seem endless. I think the big goal for Kaiser now is to get folks engaged and using these new access points.

It seems like everyone I talk to or interact with in the Health IT world is in full on HIMSS 12 preparation mode. I only attended my first HIMSS 2 years ago in Atlanta. So, I’m mostly a newbie at HIMSS. I sometimes long for the days when I just went to HIMSS with little real planning. I just went and enjoyed myself.

As you can imagine, HIMSS is a perfect place for me and my business. I’ve often told people that the core of my business is great content and advertisers. Turns out that every booth and every person at HIMSS is possibly both. For me, it’s like being a kid in a candy store. So, many exciting things to try (and you might even say you get sick after “eating” too many as the flavors all run together). To be quite honest, I love the entire experience. I was meant for the system overload that happens at HIMSS. I love large crowds of people and being overstimulated. I guess that’s why I love living in Las Vegas (which is also convenient for this year’s HIMSS).

HIMSS Attendee and Exhibitor Count
Enough about me. What can we expect at this fantastic affair called HIMSS 2012? Last year there were 30,000 attendees and I wouldn’t be surprised if this year it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 people attending HIMSS. During an #HITsm twitter chat about HIMSS, I said that there would be at least 1000 vendors exhibiting at HIMSS. If I remember right (I can’t find the tweet), one of the HIMSS staff corrected me and said there would be 1100 companies exhibiting at HIMSS this year.

What does all this mean? Well, as my mother always told me: You can’t do everything. I’d always look at her shaking my head saying, “You’re right….but I’m sure going to try.” I think this describes my approach to HIMSS as well. Although, each year I am getting more selective on what I spend my time doing.

Press at HIMSS
I’m sure that many reading this are wondering how they can get some coverage on the Healthcare Scene blog network at HIMSS. Considering the 40 or so emails from PR people that I have filed away already, I’m going to have to apply a pretty strict filter.

What then are my filters?

First, if you’re an EHR company, then I’m probably interested in connecting with you in some form. Although, if you’re an EHR company that’s just seen me and has nothing new to say, then I’ll probably pass at this HIMSS. To be honest, I could probably fill my entire schedule with just EHR companies considering how many EHR companies there are out there. Plus, I think I’m going to bring around my flip video and do an EHR series called “5 Questions with EHR Companies.” I’ll see how many EHR companies I can get to answer the same 5 questions.

However, an entire week of just EHR talk would be a little rough. Plus, I asked on Twitter if I should look at things outside of EHR and they all said I should. I’m a man for the people, so I must listen. How then could another healthcare IT company get me interested in meeting with them at HIMSS?

The best way to get me interested in talking with your company is to provide something that will be interesting, unique and insightful to my readers. Remember that my main goals are great content and advertising. If you provide me with great content that my readers will love, then I’ll love you and likely write about that content.

I didn’t realize this when I started blogging, but I’m not like a lot of journalists. I don’t go to any conference with stories in mind. I’m not digging around HIMSS to try and find an ACO story for example. Instead, every person that I talk to I’m trying to discover what stories are being told at HIMSS that are worth telling. I’m always happy when people help me find interesting stories.

Social Media at HIMSS 12
Speaking of finding stories. One of the most interesting ways I use to find stories and connect with people is through social media and in particular Twitter (see this post I did on EMR and HIPAA about Twitter). I guarantee you that Twitter usage at HIMSS 12 is going to be off the charts. There is going to literally be no way to keep up. I love the idea that Cari McLean had of the HIMSS Social Media Center summarizing the most important tweets during HIMSS. Granted, that’s an almost impossible task to ask anyone to do.

Of course, the HIMSS related hashtags will be another great way to filter through the various HIMSS related tweets that are happening. Here are some of the ones I’m sure I’ll be using:
#HIMSS12 — official hashtag for the event
#HSMC — HIMSS Social Media Center
#HITX0 — HIT X.0: Beyond the Edge specialty program
#LFTF12 — Leading from the Future specialty program
#eCollab12 — eCollaborative Forum
Here’s a bunch more HIMSS related social media hashtags you might want to consider:

HIMSS Social Media Center
If you love social media like I do, then you’re also going to love the HIMSS Social Media Center. They’re doing a number of Meet the Bloggers sessions again and I’ve been invited to participate in the Health IT Edition of Meet the Bloggers at HIMSS. I’m on the panel along with: Brian Ahier (Moderator) Health IT Evangelist, Mid-Columbia Medical Center, Jennifer Dennard, Social Marketing Director at Billian’s HealthDATA/Porter Research/HITR.com, Neil Versel, Freelance Journalist and Blogger, Carissa Caramanis O’Brien, Social Media Community and Content Director, Aetna. Should make for a pretty interesting conversation. Plus, you know I always like to mix it up a bit.

New Media Meetup at HIMSS
More details coming soon. We’ll have to work on Neil Versel’s idea of starting a Twitter storm to get Biz Stone to come to the HIMSS meetup.

Dates of HIMSS
Be sure to check the dates of HIMSS. As Neil Versel noted, it’s a little different days than it’s been in the past. I personally like these dates better than the other ones.

There you have it. I thought I’d do a short post on HIMSS and I guess I had a lot more to say. I’d love to hear if you’re going to HIMSS. If you know of any events, sessions, parties, announcements, technologies etc. that I should know about at HIMSS, let me know.

And the most exciting part of HIMSS…seeing old friends and making new friends. I can’t wait.

One thing that I love about this industry is its willingness to collaborate, and I’m not just talking about collaborative care. I’m talking about healthcare IT’s propensity to brainstorm new ideas as the drop of a hat. Put two HIT folks – be they physician, vendor or blogger – in a room, and 20 minutes later you’re going to have a new idea related to care delivery, product development or possible partnership on your hands. It gets even more prolific when editorially minded marketing folks like me are added to the mix.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how even blogs can foster this sort of collaboration. Last month in “Finding an EMR Job Champion,” I chatted with Rich Wicker, HIMS Director at Shore Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, about how this industry can best align recent graduates of HIT certification programs with training and jobs. Some of you may have noticed several comments left on that post by Sean McPhillips, a man of many hats. He is currently an adjunct instructor at Cincinnati State – a community college in the HITECH College Consortia; project manager at the Kentucky Regional Extension Center; and creator of the HITECHWorkforce.com, a free resource to help students enter the HIT work environment.

In his comments, he advocates for a mentor-protégé program: “Students still need some more help finding jobs. What I think needs to happen is a “Mentor/Protégé” model. That is, pairing students with industry professionals who can mentor them into the industry. I’ve passively done that…to success. I think that will work.” He later followed up with the news that he hopes to work with HIMSS, which is developing a similar program, to get this model off the ground.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with McPhillips a bit more about his idea. I was eager to find out just how he plans to jumpstart it:

It seems as if you’ve been kicking this idea around for a while. How did it come about?
Being with the extension center, I’ve mentored a handful of people along the way, and I think there needs to be a more structured process so that students coming out of these [HITECH College Consortia] programs who want to be mentored have a place to go, they know how to get and stay engaged in the process. I think that there is with HIMSS, but I don’t think it’s really been tightly coupled with the workforce development program.

When I spoke with Helen Figge, Senior Director of Career Services at HIMSS, she was really excited to talk with me, and pointed me to HIMSS’ career development page to look around and see what they have out there. I’m thinking of how we can connect [what they’re already doing] into the workforce development program within the overall HITECH project structure, so that we can connect students who come out of these programs with their local HIMSS chapter, which could then pair them up with a mentor that’s in their region. That’s what’s really missing. That’s what’s really necessary to get people plugged into this profession – especially if they’re coming from outside of this profession.

HIMSS does not already have some sort of relationship with the college consortia?
They kind of do, but I don’t think it’s really tightly coupled. I think HIMSS recognizes this, so they’ve been developing their career development program. They’re near completion of a new, entry-level certification called the CSHIMS certification. That is something where you don’t need to have a whole lot of experience in health information technology, but you need to demonstrate some degree of knowledge in subject matter to obtain that certification. That might be a good way to help these students take the next step into the profession, when they’re looking to get a job. That could be part of the whole mentorship program concept.

Isn’t there a double-edged sword to it financially? Wouldn’t students have to become paying members of HIMSS, and then would they have to pay for certification? If they’re looking for jobs, finances might be tighter than usual.
That’s a great point. The question is, what are the costs associated with certification and becoming a member. There is a student membership discount. There’s a cost to certification, obviously, so these are things that are to be considered. That has not escaped me, so that’s going to be part of my brainstorming session. I’m going to meet up with them in Vegas when I go out to HIMSS.

One of the things I want to be able to do is make this attractive for people, particularly students, and if they have to lay out $500 or $1,000, and they’re already unemployed or they’re financially strapped, it becomes not just a double-edged sword, it becomes a disincentive.

I wonder if the vendors couldn’t get involved and offer scholarships.
It’s funny that you mention scholarships because that might be something the local HIMSS chapters can do. I know the Ohio HIMSS chapter used to do a $1,000 scholarship every year for students. So this might be something that the boards or the individual chapters could subsidize.

If you’re in the HITECH workforce development program, maybe HIMSS would be willing to waive membership for one year. That might be something they may be interested in doing.

This is part of the whole brainstorming session that I’m going to try to have over the next month or so. I’ll vet this through HIMSS over the next couple of weeks and hopefully we’ll come up with a good strategy by the end of February. And then we’ll start piloting it in the March timeframe.

I hope to run into McPhillips in Vegas to see how his chat with the HIMSS career development folks is coming along. It’s nice to know that one industry insider’s idea, and subsequent blog comments, might actually create job opportunity in the industry.