Tech Community Involvement

Marco Kuysten attended the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) VoiceCon conference in Orlando from February 24^th through the 28^th.

With more than 28,400 attendees and 900 exhibitors, this was a record-breaking year for the Healthcare Information and Management conference. The theme of the conference was “Innovation with a shared vision”.  The highlights of the conference are outlined below.

Innovation

The definition of innovation is the introduction of something new. Google Health was definitely new, although Google has been working on it for a quite some time, they made its first formal announcement in the week before HIMSS. Google Health promises to deliver a consumer centric platform that allows users to manage their health care records and information. With Google Health, Google is rivaling Microsoft’s HealthVault and Revolution Health, backup by AOL co-founder Steve Case. Google Health is starting a pilot with the Cleveland Clinic involving a few thousand patients. The presentation and demonstration of Google Health by Google CEO Eric Schmidt raised more questions than answers: how about HIPAA, confidentiality, liability, security and of course what’s in it for Google? Google’s intent with the launch of Google Health is not to solve many of the challenges we are facing today in health care, but to provide a platform for third parties to provide services. An example eagerly awaited by many smaller healthcare providers would be a Google Health based EHR system.

Share

The definition of share is to use, participate in, enjoy or experience jointly or in turns. One development that was also very noticeable last year at HIMSS is RFID. Companies like Aeroscout, Ekahau and PanGo (now Innerwireless) ‘share’ the 802.11 wireless (WiFi) network to provide location based services. Wireless network providers such as Aruba Network, Cisco, Chantry Network (now Siemens), Meru Network and Trapeze Networks are focusing on 802.11n (raw bit rate of 300-600Mbps vs. 54Mbps for 802.11g) and creating dense wireless networks so voice over WiFi and RFID work properly. Another way of sharing is Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), demonstrated by companies like Innerwireless and Mobile Access. With DAS multiple wireless networks (for example 802.11/WiFi, PCS/GSM, WMTS, Public Safety/2-way radio and paging) share one antenna system. This eliminates the need for separate antenna systems for WiFi, GSM and WMTS.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) takes sharing to a different level. With SOA the different applications or services do not act as silos but they can use other applications or services as building blocks. A good example is Avaya’s Communications Enable Business Process (other vendors have similar solutions). Other applications such as a patient planning application can use voice as a way of contacting a patient if an earlier time slot is available. The application can call upon the Avaya communication suite to set up the call and even handle the response (‘press 1 to accept this appointment’).  There is no need to see who has expressed interest in an earlier appointment, find the phone number, write it down, call it, see if the earlier appointment is acceptable and then change the appointment in the system.

With a picture saying more than a 1,000 words, videoconferencing solutions were displayed in many booths ranging from Cisco, Polycom, Siemens (OEM LifeSize) to Tandberg. Cisco used its TelePresence 1000 platform and switched out the camera for a model with a shorter focal range to create ‘TeleHealth’. Other vendors show cased solutions ranging from security to TeleHealth or video collaboration.

Vision

The definition of vision is the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be. Jon Kaplan, Partner & Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group put the US per capita health care spend in perspective with other countries in the world and contributed part of the increase in health care cost and the highest spend per capita on the (over) use of advanced healthcare technologies such as PET/CT scanners, Robotic Surgical devices and harmonic scalpels. According to the Boston Consulting Group, IT will only be able to ‘adjust the course’ in healthcare, not ‘change the game’. To change the game the usage of healthcare needs to be limited: rationing healthcare, delaying technology adoption and creating a healthier population.