Friday Five: 30K Reasons HIMSS Wins: And Other Takeaways from Orlando

By Beth Friedman, Sr. Partner, FINN Partners
LinkedIn: Beth Friedman
LinkedIn: FINN Partners

Four years ago I walked down International Drive on a sunny March afternoon. The Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) was blanketed in HIMSS signage, but there wasn’t a soul around. Last week I returned to the OCCC for HIMSS’24 and witnessed the complete revitalization of our industry’s premier conference. The mere sight of 30,000 attendees was inspiring and solidified these three essential truths:

• Health IT professionals have emerged from the pandemic strong and ready to serve.
• Responsible use of AI in healthcare is paramount.
• HIMSS is back and better than ever.

The HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition was energizing. Instead of empty streets, I discovered packed forums and keynotes, hundreds of peer-reviewed educational sessions, and elbow-to-elbow attendees walking the exhibit hall. From my perspective, HIMSS gets the win for Spring conferences and year-round member support.

Here are five valuable takeaways for those who could not attend.

1.  AI governance is prerequisite for sitting at the adult table.

AI solves long-standing health system inefficiencies, especially in radiology, clinical documentation, and other operational areas. AI helps mitigate clinician burnout and the resultant turnover—coined “burnover” during the AI in Healthcare Forum. And the adoption of AI solutions in healthcare is rapidly underway. For example, one company at HIMSS, Intelerad, uses AI to boost radiologist efficiency in medical imaging. The company’s president, Morris Panner, reports a 20% to 40% productivity improvement for radiologists at one client site.

However, instead of espousing AI’s promises, speakers at the AI in Healthcare Forum focused on something much more important—the responsible use of AI. Brian Spisak, PhD, Harvard researcher and author, provided the best analogy of the entire conference. He likened ChatGPT to sitting at a kids table during holiday meals while chairs at the adult table are the real goal. Spisak shared three signs of “adult-table” maturity for hospitals and health systems to consider in 2024.

• The organization has good, clean, and precise data. AI doesn’t function on faulty data.
• Ethical guidelines for the responsible use of AI are established with governance teams in place.
• Deployments are safe including testing, validation, and feedback loops to address issues as they arise.

The bottom line at HIMSS’24: healthcare can’t afford to leave AI unchecked. Responsibility matters. Lives are at stake. Spisak stressed healthcare industry leadership first and technology second as providers implement new AI solutions. HIMSS’24 featured two groups focused on AI governance and responsibility. I’ll closely watch these two groups as they blaze new paths for all of us to follow.

Coalition for Health AI (CHAI)—Develops guidelines and guardrails to drive high-quality healthcare by promoting the adoption of credible, fair, and transparent health AI systems.

TRAIN—Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network (TRAIN) was launched by Microsoft during HIMSS’24. The consortium aims to operationalize responsible AI principles to improve the quality, safety, and trustworthiness of AI in health, including AI adoption in rural and community settings. Members of the network include 15 leading health systems, OCHIN, and TruBridge (formerly CPSI).

According to Leslie Breer, VP at TruBridge, “AI has the potential to improve user workflow experience by saving time in provider documentation workflows, data mining, and to be leveraged for clinical decision support, prediction, and treatment planning, but adoption must be coupled with responsibility and governance.”

2.  Data integrity has never been more important.

As mentioned above, quality data is the precursor to AI success. Every session, including keynote presentation by Bob Garrett, CEO, Hackensack Meridian Health, reiterated the importance of data accuracy. In a valuable exhibit hall educational session, Clinical Architecture, a company committed to data quality in healthcare, hosted an insightful panel focused on data’s relationship between interoperability, clinician usability, and quality reporting.

The panel emphasized clinicians’ need for trustworthy, usable, and prospective (versus retrospective) healthcare data. However, trust remains elusive and the evolution from hindsight to foresight will take more time.

3.  Men’s line is still longer, but women are catching up.

Restroom lines are commonplace for women. We experience them everywhere. But at HIMSS’24, male attendees waited in long queues after every keynote session. Yes, men continue to outnumber women at HIMSS, but we’re quickly closing rank.

Women possess unique skills to influence and lead. The winners of HIMSS’24 Women in Healthcare Changemakers awards encouraged attendees to think beyond end-user roles and pursue new leadership positions as IT partners and system executives. Wednesday evening’s Women in Health IT Networking Reception is my favorite event at HIMSS and this year was no exception.

4. Operational areas are set for IT innovation.

Inefficiency in healthcare operations is a decades-long challenge. Manual work and redundant tasks are ingrained into hundreds of day-to-day workflows. From revenue cycle to broken equipment, the operational areas in healthcare are prime candidates for AI adoption.

However, the journey to automation must include people and processes to achieve success, as emphasized by Hal Wolf, President and CEO, HIMSS, during his keynote address. Here are three conversations that echoed Wolf’s point.

Jim Forbes, Chief Strategy Officer for Vizzia Technologies, explained why health systems should “first build trusted advisory partnerships and then seek out the right technologies” as they automate the operational areas of healthcare. He shared an example of using real-time location systems (RTLS) in the emergency department to notify and prepare clinicians during the patient’s health care journey, expedite ED workflow, decrease overall length of stay, and increase patient satisfaction.

Amit Lehavi, MD, CEO of QLog Technologies, shared a similar point regarding material equipment in healthcare. As a pediatric anesthesiologist, Lehavi has witnessed countless hours of wasted nursing time looking for an infusion pump or manually posting notes for faulty ventilators. Lack of centralization and automation complicates equipment compliance and puts patient safety at risk. However, automation efforts in supply chain must include nursing teams to achieve true return on investment and relieve long-standing administrative burdens.

Finally, Piyush Khanna, VP of Clinical Services at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, reminded attendees that providers aren’t the only ones struggling with operational inefficiency. Payers and health plans also need new solutions to automate workflows and eliminate manual processes.

Khanna’s three-year clinical data exchange partnership with MRO is the foundation for CareFirst successful connection to their regional provider network and across 40 different EHRs. During Khanna’s standing-room-only session, MRO’s data integrity first approach was emphasized as a foundational step to drive efficiency for CareFirst’s quality teams, improve HEDIS scores by 63%, and achieve a .5 Star rating boost in 2023.

5. Ransomware attack renews need for “always-on” cybersecurity programs.

Conversations at HIMSS’24 didn’t focus exclusively on the industry’s largest data breach. However, the recent incident served as the proverbial “elephant in the room” prompting attendees to empathize and pontificate regarding long-term financial impacts.

The following best practices were shared during water cooler conversations and educational sessions. They serve as stark reminders for us all.

• Focus on third-party risk management—most massive breaches occur here.
• Ensure redundancy by expanding business partner relationships, have a plan B.
• Invest and mature your cybersecurity program continually.
• No one is 100% safe from an attack.
• Balance organizational risk and end-users’ operational needs.

According to Mark Johnson, CISSP, VP and Chief Information Security Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health, “If your organization is standing still in cybersecurity, you’re already behind.” HIMSS 2023 Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey is a good benchmark to reassess preparedness and shore up programs.

HIMSS Ahead: Expectations for 2025

When it came time to look ahead to HIMSS’25, keynote panelists predicted that more AI pilot projects will move into common practice, hallucinations will become manageable, and solid AI governance and regulation will be in place. Time will tell if these predictions become reality. But in the meantime, HIMSS continues to serve our industry 365 days a year through resources, work groups, and leadership.

Regardless of where you serve in the healthcare ecosystem, I encourage you to consider attending HIMSS courses, webinars, chapter events, specialty conferences, and global conventions. The health of our member-based society is strongest when everyone is involved!