HIMSS19 will feature the 9th Annual Intelligent Health Pavilion, hosted by the Intelligent Health Association. The pavilion focuses on connected technologies, vetted by a committee of experts, and how they can work together to bring about better healthcare.

“We take existing technology you can buy off the shelf today along with other software and apps and put them in the context of a hospital, so when a C-suite decision maker comes through the pavilion they can go into the operating room or one of the other rooms and can see an end solution,” said Harry Pappas, founder and CEO of the Intelligent Health Association. “Everything talking to each other in a seamless fashion.”

Conferences within a conference

There are five conferences on two stages throughout the week at the Intelligent Health Pavilion, featuring more than 100 speakers and sessions every 20 minutes, along with 60 exhibitors. The five conferences are:

• Virtual Medicine: AR/VR, Mixed Reality Conference – Tuesday, February 12, in the Innovation Theater;
• 5th Annual Conference on Wearables and Sensors for Better Health and Wellness – Wednesday, February 13, in the Leadership Theater;
• 2nd Annual AI for Healthcare Professionals Conference – Wednesday, February 13, in the Innovation Theater;
• Voice Technologies in Healthcare Workshop – Thursday, February 14, in the Leadership Theater;
• Internet of Healthcare Things, RFID, RTLS, Sensors and Wireless Technologies – Thursday, February 14, in the Innovation Theater.

There will also be live podcasting of select workshops and speakers for healthcare professionals who cannot get to HIMSS19.

One highlight of the pavilion will be demonstrations of how Amazon's Alexa can be used in healthcare, said Pappas.

“This is tied into our voice in healthcare conference, and we have demonstrations on the use of voice technologies in our iHOME, in the labor and delivery room, and other areas of our demonstration hospital,” Pappas said. “How do I use Alexa in an OR setting, in a labor and delivery setting? It’s Alexa, but it’s really voice because we are vendor neutral. It’s all about voice, Google or Cortana or any of the other voice technologies out there.”

Virtual reality

Another highlight will be Virtual Medicine Hands-On Labs – demonstrations for healthcare professionals to try out virtual reality and augmented reality hardware to see how this technology, specifically Hololens and Google Glass, can be used in the operating room setting. They also can see how the technologies can be used in the home, for example, for pain management and chronic care.

Yet another feature at the pavilion will be the Da Vinci Surgical Robot in the pavilion’s operating room.

"We take existing technology you can buy off the shelf today along with other software and apps and put them in the context of a hospital so when a C-suite decision maker comes through the pavilion they can go into the operating room or one of the other rooms and can see an end solution."

Harry Pappas, Intelligent Health Association

“This is the first time the robot will be at HIMSS, and we are working with the Nicholson Innovation Center in Orlando and others in the academic community," said Pappas. "How is the robot interacting with Hololens, how is it interacting with voice technology and other associated pieces of software and apps, so visitors can see how all of these technologies and software interact with one another to improve patient care and patient safety?"

On the sessions front, at the virtual medicine conference, a top cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic will be doing a live presentation onstage connecting one physician onstage with another physician in the OR suite at the Mayo Clinic, and they will demonstrate the use of tele-surgery and how they can use that to educate other surgeons. They will perform some live demonstrations of how augmented reality and Hololens can improve surgery.

Pavilion takeaways

Overall, HIMSS19 attendees will have a lot to take away from the Intelligent Health Pavilion, Pappas said, noting that he hopes visitors will both "learn and unlearn," given that software and apps – and the many ways they can be applied to healthcare – are "changing daily," he said.

"We don’t allow any of our sponsors to be in our pavilion unless they have been peer-reviewed," Pappas explained. "It’s not just a matter of buying a space. Everyone has been peer-reviewed by the committee. So we are very careful that the technology we are showing has been vetted, that it is real and that it works.”

Pavilion visitors get to see best-of-breed technologies they can use in the hospital or nursing home or in the home today that works, he added.

“This is why the pavilion has grown over the years, because decision makers come in knowing that we have curated the best of the best,” he contended. “A month after the HIMSS show, we get emails and phone calls, we saw this company in your pavilion, we are about to call them in for an appointment, and what do you know about them. The industry trusts us to give them vendor-neutral technology.”

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com