I think that even the senior leaders at HIMSS, the Chicago-based Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society, would agree that HIMSS21 was a “different” kind of experience. Indeed, HIMSS president and CEO Half Wolf said so during a relatively brief (about half-hour) press briefing held on Wednesday morning, August 11, in the conference press room (Bassano 2601) at the Venetian Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas.
It goes without saying that Wolf would frame everything in the best possible light, and he did, saying this, while promising the attendance figures soon: “We’re thrilled with the numbers, and we’re thrilled with the participation. I spent yesterday walking the floor,” he added. “And our staff has done a phenomenal job of social distancing. And the vendors, the market suppliers, are very, very happy. So it’s been a consistent story: yes, there are fewer attendees, but those who are here are very, very engaged. The conversations are rich and satisfying. I was unsure what that social distancing would be like. And it will be interesting going forward. And a lot of exhibitors have said, oh, we like this spaciousness! And the content has been fantastic—very rich content.” In short, he said, “It’s different, yep, but it’s really meeting positive expectations” this year. “And the panel sessions have been very, very well attended. And it’s been very energizing, so, happy is how I feel.”
As it turns out, the actual in-person attendance figure finally came Thursday around midday, and not in a press release or formal statement, but simply shared verbally with those present in the press room at the time: 19,300 in-person attendees, plus an additional 5,000 who were tuning into the virtual conference sessions. All in all, that figure was actually somewhat higher than some had predicted, given the complications of the situation. Now, what does that 19,300 number mean? It really all depends on where one sits.
In fact, many vendor executives were deeply disappointed in the turnout, though not surprised. But even that statement requires a huge asterisk, because I personally heard from several vendor executives who said that they were satisfied with the interactions they had with attendees in their booths.
The challenge? We’re all going to be doing this again in just six months, as HIMSS22 is scheduled for late February 2022 in Orlando. Who will show up—both vendors and attendees—and who won’t? Everything feels as though it’s up in the air. And of course, it must be stated very clearly that the HIMSS organization, like virtually every healthcare industry conference presenter, has had to play the cards it’s been dealt during the COVID-19 pandemic. August in Las Vegas—with the temperature soaring to 106oF every single day, and the hordes of tourists swarming the Las Vegas Strip—was almost surreally unpleasant, on a basic human-experience level; but it was what it was (at least it wasn’t Orlando in August—one can say that, anyway). More substantively, holding two annual conferences six months apart will prove challenging to nearly everyone, for diverse reasons.
And thus, the question becomes: will HIMSS22 prove to be a risky proposition right from the start? It’s hard to know, even as the terrible surge of the Delta variant is upending so many plans right now in the United States, are having to make calculations in real time, even as the landscape of business conferences continues to shape-shift. Are very large industry conferences even a smart business bet in the current epidemiological and business climate in this country? It’s really impossible to say; but, as a very large organization whose entire corporate strategy has been centered around an annual conference that has become gigantic over time (with 42,500 attending HIMSS19 in Orlando), one absolutely core element in the success of the annual HIMSS Conferences every year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic had been an air of must-be-there inevitability, both for vendors and attendees. The HIMSS Conference was simply unmissable for many healthcare IT and healthcare executives nationwide (and even internationally). Now, in the pandemic economy, all bets are off.
Meanwhile, what of the substantive content of the educational sessions at HIMSS21? There were numerous strong educational sessions during the main part of the conference that began on Tuesday, August 10. In particular, I was very impressed by Wednesday morning’s “Germany: The Digital Transformation of a Country,” which Hal Wolf moderated, and which involved Gottfried Ludewig, Ph.D., Director General, Digitization and Innovation, in the Federal Ministry of Health (in German: Bundesministerium für Gesundheit), and Henning Schneider, CIO at Asklepios Kliniken Gmbh & Co. KgaA, a large integrated health system in Hamburg; as well as Anne Snowdon, R.N., Ph.D., director of clinical research at HIMSS. Dr. Ludewig shared a very compelling narrative involving the German government’s intensive push into digitization, including even a new law that allows for physicians to prescribe patient care-related apps.
As I wrote, “What’s more, the federal Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte (BfArM), or Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, the German equivalent of the FDA in the United States, has approved the principle of software as a medical device. As a result, low-risk health apps or browser-based web apps can apply for listing by the BfArM. The procedure allows for preliminary and permanent listing; after approval, an app can now be prescribed by physicians and psychiatrists. Indeed, Ludewig noted, “We have around 20 applications already listed,” including for cancer, depression, tinnitus, diabetes, arthritis, obesity, anxiety, addiction, panic disorder sleep disorder, stroke, migraine. These apps can be prescribed and reimbursed for, he noted. Here is a link to an explanation of the new digital health applications (DiGA). This appears to be novel in Europe.” Very exciting stuff, indeed.
Meanwhile, more broadly, once again, Monday’s Preconference Programs ended up being the most consistently laudable, as had been true for years. This year, they were divided into “Forums and Summits,” and “Symposia”; the terms and frames have shifted and grown over the years. The “Forums and Summits” offered were the CIO Summit, the Healthcare Cybersecurity Forum, the Machine Learning & AI for Healthcare Forum, and the Patient Experience & Consumerization Forum, all held in ballrooms at the Wynn Resort across from the Venetian Sands. And the Symposia were the AMDIS/HIMSS Physicians’ Executive Symposium, the Clinically Integrated Supply Chain Symposium, the Global Health Equity Symposium, the Interoperability and HIE Symposium, the Nursing Informatics Symposium, and the Professional Development Symposium, all held in rooms in the Venetian Sands. Two “Collaborator Events” were also held on Monday, the ACCE CE-IT Symposium and the AUPHA Academic Forum.
I was able to attend the entire Machine Learning & AI for Healthcare Forum, and found it very substantive. Excellent discussion panels were held that involved artificial intelligence and machine learning experts and leaders of pioneering patient care organizations that are pushing the envelope in terms of really bringing AI and machine learning into patient care delivery and healthcare operations now for the first time at any level of scale.
As I wrote on Aug. 10, “In a discussion session held on Tuesday afternoon, under the session title “Making Sense of Health Data to Accelerate the Shift From a Reactive to Proactive Healthcare System,” Taha Kass-Hout, M.D., chief medical officer and director of health AI at Amazon Web Services, moderated the panel. His fellow panelists were Bala Hota, M.D., M.P.H., vice president and chief analytics officer at Rush University Medical Center and Rush Health in Chicago; Ashok Chennuru, chief data and analytics officer at the Indianapolis-based Anthem; and Tanuj Gupta, M.D., vice president and physician executive at the Kansas City-based Cerner.” What really spoke to innovation was the fact that analytics leaders from both the provider side (Rush’s Hota) and the payer side (Anthem’s Chennuru) shared their perspectives, and dialogued together on where the entire healthcare system is going, not just providers alone (or payers alone).
So—what strikes me in all of this is how careful the balance needs to be in crafting an annual conference, at scale, that meets everyone’s needs. Perhaps the perfect can never be achieved. But the success that the HIMSS leaders have had over the years—clearly, they’ve turned their annual conference into an event not to be missed by industry leaders—could all be heading into choppy waters going forward. Numerous elements are making it more difficult to put on huge-sized conferences and conventions in healthcare as well as in other industries, and then, there are the disruptors like HLTH and others, that are champing at the bit to topple the Goliath of U.S. healthcare conferences. What’s more, on a very basic level, holding two annual conferences in six months—yes, necessitated by what has happened with the pandemic—is a risky proposition indeed.
So what will HIMSS22 be like in Orlando? Who will be satisfied—or dissatisfied—with it? And, even more broadly, how will the leaders of all of the U.S. healthcare system manage the winds of change in this completely unsettled nationwide (and, really, global as well) industry landscape? Only time will tell. What does seem clear, though, is that the old certainties (if ever they were certain to begin with) and the old verities (if ever they were solid to begin with) are more threatened than ever, as we head into a period of destabilization as big as the entire U.S. healthcare system. One is terribly tempted to insert a gambling metaphor here. Let’s just say that there was something weirdly apt about gathering in Las Vegas at a time when all bets are off about what will happen in U.S. healthcare in the next few years, and perhaps leave it at that.
