UPDATE: HIMSS organizers have decided to cancel the 2020 conference. The announcement followed the publication of this story.
President Donald Trump will be addressing a large healthcare informatics conference event in Orlando Monday even though coronavirus fears have led to many large companies pulling out.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
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HIMSS annually draws tens of thousands of people but organizers have been grappling with the fallout of the virus that has so far killed nine in the U.S. and more than 3,000 worldwide.
While Trump will address the issue of interoperability (or the lack thereof) in healthcare, he will not address the topic that poses a great challenge to his administration: coronavirus and how Americans will be protected from the disease termed Covid-19.
Meanwhile, even as requests for an interview with this editor continue to come from tech vendors, many others are canceling interviews: AWS formally issued a statement:
Due to the continued concerns about COVID-19, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in the HIMSS20 Conference, scheduled for Mar. 9-13 in Orlando. We’ve reached this decision after much consideration, as the health and safety of our employees, customers, and partners are our top priority.
So have Intel and Cisco.
A Google representative canceled a planned interview with Google Cloud executives though he didn’t immediately respond whether it was because of coronavirus that the executives were pulling out. An interview with a Stanford Children’s digital health expert was similarly canceled.
A spokeswoman for HIMSS organizers said there would be no comment on how many exhibitors are pulling out. But she expressed great excitement over the president’s participation at next week’s conference. Jared Kushner, Trump’s special adviser, last spoke on interoperability at HIMSS in 2018.
“The president is very engaged,” said Karen Groppe, senior director of corporate communications, HIMSS in a briefing with reporters by phone on Wednesday, before noting, “it’s a hard thing to say “no” to.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will be accompanying the president to Orlando.
Photo by Alex Wong, Getty Images
