Health IT

Philadelphia healthcare innovators want to bring Biden to HIMSS

The idea is to showcase the Philadelphia region as a hub of healthcare innovation that can, among other things, help Biden's Cancer Moonshot effort.

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The huge, annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference starts a week from Monday. Hotels have been sold out for months. But there’s a good chance someone might be able to snag a prime room at the last minute, particularly if that someone is former Vice President Joe Biden.

Now that Biden has decided to set up shop — at least part-time — at the University of Pennsylvania as head of the new Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the Philadelphia health tech community sees him as a unique asset. Several health IT and digital health interests in Southeast Pennsylvania are trying to get the former VP down to HIMSS17 in Orlando, Florida, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

The idea is to showcase the Philadelphia region as a hub of healthcare innovation that can, among other things, help Biden’s Cancer Moonshot effort. There could be a lot of competition; the state of Georgia actually will have a booth at HIMSS touting the state and the Atlanta area has the nation’s capital of health IT.

“We definitely need someone of his stature to come and kind of help bring all of these parties together,” Rakesh Mathew, program director of the HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania, told the Business Journal. HSX is a nonprofit health information exchange serving 39 hospitals in the region.

“Just because you have a lot of research on a particular condition, you’re not going to solve everything,” Mathew explained. “You need to get that research to the right folks at the right times.”

According to the report, the newly launched Biden Foundation has not indicated whether the former vice president would accept the invitation to attend HIMSS, as plenty of prominent politicians have before.

Former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have keynoted past HIMSS conferences, and newly confirmed Health and Human Secretary Dr. Tom Price attended at least one when he was a congressman from Georgia. Ex-Massachusetts Gov. and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made an appearance at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas.

Biden, as he often reminds people, is a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for 36 years while living in the Philadelphia suburb of Wilmington.

Photo: MedCity News

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