Once again, over 40,000 healthcare IT enthusiasts convened in Las Vegas to connect with peers, learn from thought leaders and share visions. This year, compared to the last seven HIMSS shows I have attended, marked a year where all of the conversations I had were truly elevated – players were talking about 5-10 year strategies, not looking in the rear view mirror. In fact, the conversations seemed to focus around three key areas; next generation healthcare networking, security and cloud connectivity. Regardless of whether it was a national healthcare delivery organization or a small clinical network, players were thinking through many of the same challenges, opportunities and goals.
Cloud Connectivity
It is now a common understanding that with the transition from volume to value healthcare organizations need to increase flexibility, invest in cost effective solutions and scale more seamlessly to end patients. The proprietary cloud survey we did with HIMSS analytics, due out in the coming weeks, confirmed that healthcare organizations are moving to the cloud for back office applications, email and storage to get comfortable and test non-PHI data in a cloud environment. The next steps surround leveraging the cloud to access compute cycles for big data analytics and to deploy and support patient engagement tools. This was echoed at HIMSS16, conversations revolved around how organizations and their data scientists are leveraging big data and compute cycles to discover actionable intelligence to help their systems discover best practices and realized improved outcomes. With the unbounded intelligence and innovation that analytics can bring the strategic benefit of cloud now outweighsprevious reservations.
Security
In 2015 there were than the previous six years combined and IDC predicts that will be compromised in 2016. Those are some startling statistics and translated to security being a topic that was very top of mind during the show. Our security specialists were on hand to walk through our live threat map which illustrates real time attacks around the globe as well as walk through different tools and solutions available. We heard from healthcare leaders that with ‘the edge’ becoming obsolete with IoT devices, smart phones, and with rampant adoption of applications their security environment continues to become more complex. This year also marked a year where providers seemed far more open to partnering with best of breed players. Conversations focused around the various risks that hospitals are facing and how partners’ solutions can help them quantify and prioritize risks as well as protect care critical applications and confidential data with network based security and DDoS solutions.
Next Generation Healthcare Network
There were many conversations that focused around optimizing cash flow. M&A activity combined with ACA impacts and Capex vs. Opex considerations translates to organizations increasingly looking to third parties’ data centers and more sophisticated, flexible networking solutions. This allows healthcare organizations to focus resources on their core competencies of delivering optimal care outcomes. Health IT leaders communicated throughout the conference that they are looking for network architecture solutions that are secure, highly-connected, resilient and that can evolve with industry requirements of cloud connectivity, virtual care and integration. Players are increasingly looking to network infrastructure providers that can seamlessly connect them to the cloud, to healthcare SaaS providers, to patients in the home and to remote clinical offices.
This was the most thought-provoking HIMSS I have attended yet because a consensus has finally formed around embracing technology to advance care (for more of my thoughts on this, ). More leaders talked about accessing compute cycles for analytics and intelligence, more leaders addressed security challenges head on and conversations focused on the road ahead. Healthcare continues to see rapid and revolutionary change and IT is truly in the driver’s seat, based on conversations had at HIMSS, we are strapped in and ready to go