Taking aim at building a better person-centered HIE at HIMSS18

HIMSS and SHIEC offer a day-long symposium that finds consumerism influencing interoperability these days, like so much else in healthcare.

By Mike Miliard

February 12, 2018

12:36 PM

The focus of the HIMSS/SHIEC Interoperability & HIE Symposium at HIMSS18 is "Facilitating Person-Centered Interoperable HIE to Manage Complex Populations."

The aim is to focus on one of the most important issues of wide-ranging health information exchange: enabling better population health management for complex patients in the era of value-based care.

The day's sessions will explore the technologies, policies, payment issues, emerging technical standards and clinical use cases helping the country move forward and the oft-elusive goal of semantic interoperability for better patient health.

Attendees will learn about the data sources necessary for value-based interoperability efforts to pay dividends; see how public- and private sector projects can help inspire more data exchange innovations and learn more about how social determinant and behavioral health data are impacting pop health initiatives and being integrated into various HIE structures.

The day kicks off with an opening keynote from Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative CEO Micky Tripathi and McKinsey expert Jessica Kahn on the state of interoperability and the various ways, tactical and strategic, its trajectory is changing nationwide.

Other sessions will show how HIEs are helping improve the management of complex populations, explore "creative solutions to common problems" and in the closing keynote – offered by CareJourney President (and former U.S. CTO) Aneesh Chopra, Mayo Clinic CIO Cris Ross and Indiana Health Information Exchange CEO John Kansky – explore a fundamental question about the future of exchange: "A Great Leap Forward or Incrementalism?"

The idea that the right caregivers should have the right access to the right patient health information at the right time is foundational to the idea of health IT. And early on it may have seemed like a no-brainer that would be fairly easy to solve. But the years since have shown there to be many challenges along the way.

Still, there has been big progress made over the past 20 years or so and innovation continues apace. At the HIMSS/SHIEC event, stakeholders from all corners of the interoperability world will share their perspectives and offer proof that public-sector and market-based strategies are continuing to push the proverbial needle on health information exchange – both noun and verb.

The HIMSS/SHIEC Interoperability & HIE Symposium is from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 5 in Lando 4302 at the Venetian Convention Center. Cost is $350.