As mentioned previously, I’m planning to do 5 questions with as many EHR vendor executives as possible at HIMSS12. I plan on posting at least one of these videos each day of HIMSS on EMR and EHR. Plus, each day I’ll plan on doing a HIMSS12 overview post each day on EMR and HIPAA.

First up in our 5 questions with EHR vendor executives is the Dr. Andre Vovan, founder of Free EHR software vendor Mitochon.

See more of Mitochon’s HIMSS12 Announcements on EMR News.

Full Disclosure: Mitochon is an advertiser on EMR and EHR.

As some of you know, I’ve toyed with videos on my site for a while now. HIMSS is definitely the place where I’ve done the most video and that will be true again this year. I decided to take a pretty simple approach to video at HIMSS12. Since a large portion of my meetings at HIMSS will be with EHR vendor executives, I thought it would be fun to ask all the EHR vendors the same 5 (I don’t mind doing more or less if they’re good questions) questions.

Since I love the idea of involving the community and kind of crowdsourcing the questions, I’m going to put a few questions out there and listen to feedback from the community on other questions I should ask or modifications to the questions which will get EHR executives to provide some useful information.

1. What differentiates your EHR today?
2. In what ways has the EHR stimulus money and meaningful use had an impact for good or bad on the EHR industry?
3. What are the top reasons why doctors are adopting EHR software?
4. What are the main reasons doctors aren’t adopting EHR software?
5. What will differentiate your EHR 5 years from now?

I’m looking forward to hearing any suggestions you have on how to improve or modify the questions. I suspect I’ll do quite a bit of editing of the questions before I start asking the questions tomorrow. Watch for the videos to be posted on this site, EMR and HIPAA, and EMR and EHR Videos.

I recently was interviewed by someone interested in helping doctors understand the various dynamics of EHR selection and in particular the impact of hugely discounted and Free EHR models on the selection process. The discussion reinforced a long held belief of mine that EHR Selection is the most important part of the EHR selection process. In fact, my final comments to her were that doctors need to take the time that’s necessary to filter through the 300+ EHR vendors out there.

A few years back I wrote an e-Book on EMR selection that I believe has provided some benefit to those selecting an EHR. In the book I suggest that you need to narrow down the number of EHR companies you’re going to look at since very very few doctors can look through all 300 EHR companies. One website I suggest in the book is EMR Consultant.

EMR Consultant is now an advertiser on this site, but I’ve been recommending the service they provide since long before they became an advertiser. It is an EMR Selection service built by a doctor for doctors. They’ve streamlined much of the process for those doctors who don’t want to go through a full analysis, but I suggest you don’t skimp on the EHR selection process. If you do the full process, EMR consultant matches against 100,000 parameters and looks over 600+ EMR listings (That’s a broad definition of EMR which is why I say about 300 full EMR).

One challenge doctors are facing today is that a whole bunch of less qualified EHR selection services have popped up and have been flooding the market. At the end of the day, that shouldn’t have that HUGE of an impact on the EHR market. Just because a selection service recommends a particular EHR doesn’t mean you have to go with that EHR. In fact, I suggest looking at about 5 EHR and if none of them fit, then look at 5 more.

The most important message is spend the time and effort necessary to select the right EHR. It will be worth the extra effort on the front end. If you’re going to rush any part of the process, don’t rush the selection.

Since I mentioned EMR Consultant, it’s worth also mentioning that one other part of the company behind EMR Consultant is a website called EHR TV. Eric, founder of EHR TV, has invested a lot of money and staff to create a really solid video product around EHR and Healthcare IT videos.

EHR TV will have a whole crew at HIMSS again this year as they’ve done the past couple years. They worked really hard to bring in some big name people they can interview on camera. I expect they’ll create some of the most interesting content for those not able to make it to HIMSS. My only complaint is that they don’t have a way I can embed some of their videos. Maybe one day they’ll open that up.

On a HIMSS note, I had my first HIMSS networking event last night and it was fantastic. This week is going to be busy but great.

I’ve been inundated with two things as of late – HIMSS12 planning and all things business intelligence. I’ve spent the last few weeks helping prepare the Porter Research team for a webinar on providers’ perceptions of business intelligence, which I’m sure will be a big theme at HIMSS. As I’ve been looking over data from the latest Porter Research survey on BI, I’ve realized that providers know they need it but many aren’t quite sure how to define it, what they need out of it, how to implement it, or how to go about making it meaningful for their organization’s particular needs. And vendors in the healthcare space seem to be (or so I thought) just getting into the game of developing these sorts of tools – be they on a departmental or enterprise level.

Micky Tripathi, President and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) – a nonprofit healthcare IT advisory and consultancy firm – alerted me to an interesting business intelligence tool called popHealth during my recent interview with him for a Porter Research feature on that state’s developing health information exchange. The MAeHC team, which includes among its services the MAeHC Quality Data Center, will be part of the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS12, and will help to highlight the functionality and accuracy of the popHealth tool.

“popHealth was originally created as an open-source quality measurement tool by the Primary Care Information Project in New York City,” explained Tripathi, “which was headed at the time by Dr. Farzad Mostashari. Now that he’s the national coordinator for health IT, he’s been promoting it at a national level as a free, open-source tool that any organization in the country can use to send their clinical data to and get Meaningful Use clinical quality measures out of.”

Since then, the ONC has contracted with the Mitre Corporation to further develop the platform for a national user base.

You can of course check out the popHealth website for more info, but in a nutshell, the tool is “an open source reference implementation software service that automates the reporting of Meaningful Use quality measures. popHealth integrates with a healthcare provider’s electronic health record (EHR) system using continuity of care records. popHealth streamlines the automated generation of summary quality measure reports on the provider’s patient population.

“popHealth supports healthcare providers and EHR vendors by reporting clinical quality measures from electronic health record continuity of care files. Providers are empowered to better understand, and analyze the health of their patient population, and meet Meaningful Use reporting objectives, through reports of clinical quality measures. EHR vendors and healthcare providers are free to download, use, and integrate the popHealth software in their systems.”

The popHealth team will at HIMSS also to announce the winner of their tool development challenge. Announced last fall, the competition challenges participants to “develop an application that leverages the popHealth open source framework, existing functionality, standards and sample datasets to improve patient care and provide greater insight into patient populations.”

As the need for business intelligence tools and demand for open source solutions grow, I’ll be interested to see if popHealth ushers in a new era of reporting – one that everyone can take advantage of thanks to its non-existent price tag.

If you’re planning on going to HIMSS, then hopefully you saw my post on EMR and HIPAA about the New Media Meetup at HIMSS sponsored by simplifyMD. Registration is going fast and I think we’ll be at max capacity this week. It’s setting up to once again be a premiere event at HIMSS.

The good news is that I’m happy to announce that Ozmosis has come on board as the giveaway sponsor of the New Media Meetup. That’s right! They’ve provided 3 Kindle Fire to be given away to those attending the New Media Meetup. I must admit. I want to get my hands on my own Kindle Fire (even though I’m not eligible to win). Thanks to Ozmosis for the giveaways. You can read more about what Ozmosis does below.

About Giveaway Sponsor

Ozmosis, Inc. brings the power of “Social Business” to the healthcare industry. Our collaborative care platform, OzmosisESP, accelerates clinical transformation by enabling hospital systems to coordinate treatment, manage clinical content, deliver virtual training and communicate more effectively.

Also, I got some pictures of the BB King’s Blues Club venue for the New Media Meetup. Check out how awesome this place is:

Register for the New Media Meetup NOW!!

HIMSS Social Media Genius Bar
For those that can’t make it to the New Media Meetup, Influential Networks is hosting a Social Media Genius Bar at the HIMSS Social Media Center. Details will be posted to the HIMSS Social Media page shortly, but here are the details:
Tuesday, February 21, 11:00 am-12:00 pm
Wednesday, February 22, 10:00 am-11:00 am
Thursday, February 23, 11:00 am-12:00 pm

During this hour-long session, social media experts will be available to aspiring and established bloggers and social media users to offer personalized feedback on their social media and blogging strategies and tactics, as well as offer direction on how to make improvements. Walk-ins are welcome or make appointments online.

I’ll be there for the second half hour each day for those interested in stopping by.

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.

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.

I’ve been really intrigued by a number of the articles written by the famous healthcare IT journalist, Neil Versel on his site Meaningful Health IT News (Note: I host his blog, but he creates all the content). Here’s a few of his interesting posts and my thoughts about them.

Founder of Twitter, Biz Stone to Speak at HIMSS 2012 – I think this is really exciting. I’m interested to hear what he’ll say about healthcare. I’m not sure how much he’ll mention Twitter, but he’s got a smart mind and I love listening to smart people.

I’d love for Biz to take questions from Twitter during the event too. He also helped create and launch blogger. Maybe we could convince Biz Stone to come to the 3rd Annual New Media Meetup at HIMSS 2012.

BTW, @HIMSS got Biz Stone’s Twitter handle wrong. He’s @Biz.

CPOE Cartoons – Everyone needs a good laugh. So, I enjoyed these cartoons which make light of the idea that doctors might just search Google for the answers. Of course they won’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that doctors of the future will have amazing resources online to help them treat patients better than they do now.

Neil also mentioned the passing of Bernadine Healy and Janice Simmons. My condolences go out to both their families. Janice did something similar at FierceEMR to what I do on here. It’s a stark reminder that life is short. I’ve had it on my mind lately since last week my wife and I created a Trust and last night I finally put together the information about all my websites for my wife should something happen to me. Here’s hoping that she never needs that information, but I feel much better knowing she has it.