Tag Archives: HIMSS

SXSW: Woodstock for Geeks

Posted on March 11, 2012 by
Oh sweet mystery of life! I have found you!

Turns out there are all different kinds of techno geeks out there. At HIMSS a few weeks ago I was feeling semi-hip among the healthcare uber-nerd crowd that worries about how to make big hospital and healthcare enterprises function with big data. It’s a festival of old-school techno weenies recognizable in the wild by their big company expense accounts and the blue and gray suits that barely cover their pocket protectors.  It also felt like a group desperately trying to catch the back of the social networking wave into the world where Mark Zuckerberg and Biz Stone are Gods, not men.  In fact, Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, was a keynote speaker at HIMSS and it seemed like the proverbial fish in need of a bicycle.  One audience member actually leaned over and said to me, “I have no idea what these young social networking people are talking about.” Poor guy could not have been more than 50 but he was definitely his father’s Oldsmobile.  I didn’t want to tell him that by failing to recognize social networking as a meaningful phenomenon he had one foot in the healthcare IT … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Private Equity, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Analysis Paralysis

Posted on February 26, 2012 by
Underwear Gnomes in search of a business model

37,000 of my closest friends and I attended the HIMSS Conference last week in Las Vegas.  For those of you who don’t have a propeller permanently implanted in your head, HIMSS stands for the Health Industry Management Systems Society.  It is an industry association self-proclaimed to be focused on “transforming healthcare through information technology.”

Despite the fact that I have worked in and around healthcare information technology (“HIT”) for nearly 25 years (since I was 7), I had never been to HIMSS before.  This year, when HIT has become the new, new thing once again, I decided I should check it out.

Have you ever gone to the park where there are a hundred kids attempting to co-exist in the sandbox with one shovel?  As you would expect, there would be a lot of screaming, pushing, shoving, cajoling, cringing and toddler-on-toddler contact as everyone jockeyed for control of the shovel.  That’s what HIMSS felt like to me.  There was such a cacophony of noise, information and activity that I went into sensory overload the minute I stepped into the conference area.  In Las Vegas, that’s saying something.  I have become somewhat … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Information Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments