The exhibit hall at the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) 2014 conference is pretty humungous. Even with tens of thousands of people milling around there’s still plenty of elbow room. The central part of the floor is dominated by the huge booths (some with two levels) of the industry giants. Those booths are pretty informative and impressive.
Yet I enjoy starting off by exploring the outskirts of the hall where the small booths reside. This is an admittedly hit or miss approach, but there are some real gems among the exhibitors. It’s always a learning experience for me.
A few of the interesting companies I met today for the first time are:
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
- PatientSafe Solutions (booth 3983) a point-of-care mobile solution that integrates positive patient identification workflows into existing EHRs by using a modified iPhone
- Applied Pathways (booth 3989), which offers a cloud-based platform to enable clinicians and business analysts to develop and curate clinical rules and to implement custom workflows without IT support
- Condusiv Technologies (booth 3392) whose software improves hardware performance, e.g., by optimizing input/output processes– thus reducing the need to add expensive new gear
- IMAT Solutions (booth 3792), an advanced data aggregation, analysis and reporting company
I’m sure there are many more interesting companies I haven’t met yet. I look forward to finding some of them over the next couple days.
—
By health care business consultant David E. Williams, president of the Health Business Group.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
