What should you expect at HIMSS16?

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference begins Monday in Las Vegas. It promises to be the largest ever, as registration was running ahead of last year’s record pace; HIMSS15 drew more than 45,000 to Chicago, beating the previous high mark by close to 20 percent. #HIMSSanity, indeed.

Among the throng at HIMSS16, which could approach 50,000, will be more than 1,300 vendors. Attendees are coming from 74 countries, according to HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith, who spoke at length to MedCity News in a podcast last week. There are upwards of 400 educational sessions to choose from, plus a full day of preconference symposia on Monday.

Smith gave us kind of the official take on what really is the Super Bowl of health IT events in terms of size and hype. Surprisingly, she said healthcare CIOs seem be most concerned about adapting to value-based payment models than two issues that have been grabbing headlines: the future of the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program and growing cybersecurity threats.

MedCity News staff talked about HIMSS16 last Friday on MedHeads.

We do expect to see plenty on both Meaningful Use and cybersecurity. Circle 5:30 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday on the calendar, when Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavitt and national health IT coordinator Dr. Karen DeSalvo hold a forum.

Slavitt may not give specifics just what “something better” than Meaningful Use will be, but he and DeSalvo will spend most of the session taking questions from the audience and from Twitter, and people do have plenty of questions about MU. They’ll be taking over a showroom at the Venetian normally occupied by the hit stage musical “Rock of Ages,” so organizers clearly are expecting a big crowd.

The keynote choices are interesting. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell will split the opening session with computer mogul Michael Dell on Monday at 5 p.m. Burwell is supposed to make some news, though her people aren’t saying exactly what.

Dell isn’t speaking to the media at HIMSS, so his keynote will be the only chance for us to hear what’s on his mind.

There are no midweek keynotes this time, just two sessions on Friday, after most of the vendors will have left. (The exhibition ends Thursday at 6 p.m.)

Anyone still at HIMSS Friday morning will hear from Wharton professor Jonah Berger, author of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On.” It’s not about healthcare, but viral marketing. Closing out HIMSS16 in the early afternoon will be recent Super Bowl-winning quarterback Peyton Manning, who is supposed to announce his retirement from football this week.

HIMSS closing keynotes generally stray from the health IT theme, but Manning might just say something about his own experience getting access to his own healthcare data, particularly after he moved from Indianapolis to Denver while recovering from a series of neck surgeries.

You can be sure that hundreds of vendors of will be taking advantage of the forum to release new products, announce customer wins and, in at least one instance, unveil a new company name. Expected buzzwords to dominate: interoperability, population health, precision medicine, patient access and, of course, revolutionary.

We can’t cover them all, for sure, but we will have a daily summary of HIMSS16 vendor announcements on MedCityNews.com, plus a special HIMSS e-newsletter each day this week.

But what we’re really looking for are big splashes like IBM made at HIMSS15 with news of two acquisitions and the launch of Watson Health.  We’re also looking for things that won’t be in press releases, such as former national health IT coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari’s impassioned call for patient access to their own health records and our exclusive report that GE Healthcare wanted to leave the inpatient EHR market.

May you not be in a #HIMSSHaze by the end of the week.