Reflecting on HIMSS17

We recently attended The 2017 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition (HIMSS17), the biggest date in the health IT calendar. Now the dust has settled on this year’s event, we thought we’d share three of the major talking points from the three days we spent in Orlando.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity has long been one the biggest talking points in healthcare and at HIMSS, and the fact that HIMSS17 dedicated a day-long forum to the topic alone, suggests it’s an issue that remains high on the agenda of healthcare organizations across the country.

Cyber attacks have continued to rise in recent years, with phishing, ransomware attacks and social engineering becoming increasingly common, as hackers seek new and inventive ways of gaining access to sensitive information held by healthcare organizations. The combination of sitting on valuable data and lapse security standards make the healthcare industry an extremely attractive target to cyber criminals, and it will remain this way until the industry finds a way of working collectively towards better security standards.

For those who couldn’t make the cybersecurity sessions at HIMSS this year, all of the session handouts can be downloaded here.

Patient engagement & connected health

Patient engagement, or empowerment, is all about providers and patients working together to improve health outcomes. In February we predicted that patient engagement would be a major talking point at this year’s event, and we weren’t wrong.

In particular, technologies built for patient engagement took a more prominent role than ever, as did discussions around wearables, social media and mobile apps. The one-day Connected Patient forum at HIMSS featured a number of sessions dedicated to showcasing how connected health plays a critical role in enhancing health and wellness through patient engagement technology – the session handouts from this forum can be download here.

Emerging health technologies

As ever, technology played a major role at this year’s event. From artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, to big data and health analytics, there was a definite buzz in the air around emerging technologies and their impact on the future of healthcare. Machine learning and AI are already having an impact on healthcare and will continue to grow – just how significant a role such technologies play in the future of healthcare is yet to be seen. As above, all of the related session handouts can be found on the HIMSS website.

Did you miss us at HIMSS17? If you’d like to find out more about any of our healthcare productivity tool – Sfax  – please don’t hesitate to get in touch to schedule a demo.