Last month, g2o team members spent a few days at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Las Vegas. It was a whirlwind week of educational sessions and informative conversations with customers and partners.
We’ve had some time now to decompress and regroup following our first in-person event participation in more than 18 months(!!). While attendance was light, the team saw a lot of familiar faces. It was great to be connecting back in with the HIMSS community!
As a follow-up to the event, we’ve put together a summary of three key topics discussed during HIMSS. This is not an exhaustive list – there were numerous topics and other areas of interest at the conference, but these are top of mind for many of our clients:
1. Interoperability – for years the healthcare industry has been focused on interoperability. Fueled by EMR adoption, the initiative has seen much progress in the past 10 years. This was evident at HIMSS: there were numerous topics, sessions, and innovators that dove into interoperability in more detail. To oversimplify the concept, integration and identity were two areas that got the most focus.
With emerging policy support, g2o continues to monitor near-term trends, threats, and opportunities, as well as industry advancement. At g2o we term this the “New Privacy Problem,” in that our customers and partners will be forced to open up access safely after years of locking things down. The privacy problem and interoperability continue to be important and prescient issues.
For a quick summary on past and future interoperability deadlines, check out this printable timeline .
2. Digital Relevance– the events of the last year and a half have accelerated digital transformation in many industries, and healthcare is no exception. HIMSS sessions explored what is keeping healthcare CIOs up at night, the future of healthcare IT, and the relationships between IT and other healthcare roles in advancing digital transformation.
When the first lockdown hit, companies across the globe scurried to continue to serve businesses, cementing expectations for a more digital-forward model—a model that was previously reserved for banking and retail use cases. As we adjust to a post-COVID world, g2o anticipates we will continue to see digital needs evolve in healthcare as consumerism expectations influence how our customers and partners must serve patients.
Digital transformation is here to stay, and the organizations leading the pack are those that embrace it.
3. Patient and Customer Journeys – as a result of the aforementioned trends, and exacerbated by pressures like reimbursement tied to the patient experience, the g2o team saw and heard much focus centered around patients. One of the recurring themes we saw across the board is that the Voice of the Patient is becoming louder than ever. As the industry continues to innovate and work to make healthcare more affordable and accessible for all, it is clear the patient needs to be at the center of this.
Actors across the system, pharma, payers, and providers are all considering tools such as journey mapping to understand the voice of the patient and deliver better patient experiences across the care continuum. Whether the journey was one of internal clients consuming data, communicating and supporting patients in various points during their care, or anywhere in between, it’s obvious understanding journeys is key to providing the best possible experiences in healthcare.
As g2o continues to partner with companies that are solving some of healthcare’s biggest challenges, we value any opportunity to spend learning and connecting with some of the most well-known industry experts. Thank you to the HIMSS team for providing an informative and safe conference!
For more information on how g2o can help you in these three areas, and more, check out our healthcare page.
