For those planning to visit the HIStalk booth (#1995), here’s a celebrity addition: Vince Ciotti will be on hand Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 until noon.
3M announces that it will acquire analytics and BI vendor Treo Solutions.
Vonlay is doing some cool social media coverage of the HIMSS conference as they always do. Check out their page.
CVS MinuteClinic announces that it will replace its homegrown EMR with Epic.
The HIMSS opening reception was a disaster in my book, rivaling the Chicago one as the worst one ever. HIMSS decided for some reason to hold it in the Hyatt Regency across the street rather than the convention center itself as has always been the case, and International Drive was full of people who were lost since that hotel complex is almost as big as the convention center. Someone told me that HIMSS screwed up and had some of the directional signs reversed, which probably didn’t help, and I saw one HIMSS person running around with “follow me” hand-held signs to try to herd the puzzled crowds through the bowels of the endless building to its southernmost point that seemed like a mile from the main entrance. The room was the usual cheerless airplane hanger, so the impetus to move from the convention center is unclear. HIMSS went back to the much-hated drink ticket concept that was a welcome deletion a few years back, but it didn’t really matter since the bar lines were at least 40 people deep at every location and the incessant din that could have been a band, recorded music, or a plane passing overheard made it impossible to think, much less hold even a shouted conversation. I lasted about two minutes and left without eating, drinking, or talking to anyone since it was about as pleasant as as dental surgery. There’s a lot to dislike about how HIMSS conducts business, but clearly botched conference logistics isn’t usually one of them.
We had a nice reception for HIStalk sponsors Sunday evening. Thanks to the really cool people who actually showed up, which unfortunately was only about 40 percent of the total who RSPV’ed. Because of the thousands of dollars I spent to guarantee the 60 percent who were no-shows whom I suspect were registered by their clueless admins, I’m pretty sure I won’t do another one, especially thinking of the time and effort required to manage all of their never-ending requests to bring extra people who joined them in going elsewhere. Thanks to Dr. Gregg and Lorre for running the event. Those who attended had nothing but compliments about it.
We gave out some really cool mugs with healthcare IT news headlines from the past year at the sponsor event, and because of all the folks who blew it off, we’ll have …read more
