CardMunch: If you find that your business card collection is getting unmanageable and you can’t find contact information for the one person you need to call, the CardMunch app from LinkedIn is the perfect solution. This is a free app for iPhone users that allows you to simply take a picture of any business card, and all the contact information is imported into your phone. Once you have signed in via LinkedIn, the app will tell you what connections, if any, you have in common with your new contacts and allow you to connect with them right then and there. This is a very useful app for the business person on the go, or for anyone in the healthcare industry gearing up for HIMSS12.

Past Words of the Week

LiveGO, ifttt, Chaptur, SOPA, Social Television, Flipboard, Social Commerce, Doximity, Troll, Healia, HealthTECH Live, Revolution Health, Buffer, Twilert, nptech, Taweet, MedicalCavity, DoAT, Turntable.fm, iMedix, Twylah, Masher, Proxlet, Geeje, Google+, SocialVisor, Scribd, Pinterest, Graspr, White hat, Screenr, dushare, MEDgle, PostPost, Deals, SPOT Healthcare, Evernote, dlvr.it, Bounce, iTriage, popurls, Trunk.ly, Dropbox, Storify, Newsvine, Layers, Thsrs, #tagdef, Check-in, MDJunction, Blekko, Healthline, Spindex, Vanilla, Twingr, Tweetbeat, Social Media Policy, infoMedMD, Health Care 3.0, Groupon, icyou, #MDchat, Quality 101, MedlinePlus, HITSphere, URL X-ray, Mashup, Blog Talk Radio, TweetedRanks, Ping.fm, Digsby, Qik, Posterous, Ning, API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags

In the latest installment of our HIMSS12 blog series, Gary Palgon of Liaison Technologies is interviewed. Gary serves as Liaison’s vice president of healthcare solutions. To view earlier installments click here.

Dodge: What do you think will be the theme of conversations this year at HIMSS?

Palgon: Three things:

• Cloud services and how they can help organizations
• Mobility and how it can facilitate better patient care
• Social networking, benefiting both the business and patient sides of healthcare

Dodge: How is Liaison approaching its overall strategy for HIMSS this year?

Palgon: Being the largest healthcare show of the year, beyond meeting with prospects, we see it as an opportunity to network with the journalists and analysts that are there. We also see an opportunity at the conference for brand awareness and business development with other companies that we do or should partner with that are attending.

Dodge: What are you looking forward to most at HIMSS?

Palgon: We are mostly looking forward to creating more brand awareness and the opportunity to meet the mass amount of people that are there. Liaison Healthcare Informatics is one of the best kept secrets in integration and data harmonization.

Dodge: Cloud’s a big topic of conversation right now and will likely continue to be during HIMSS. As an expert in this area, what types of conversations do you anticipate hearing during the conference and how do they play into other trends in healthcare like care coordination, ICD-10 or Meaningful Use?

Palgon: In 2009, people were beginning to learn what the cloud was. In 2010 people were looking at the cloud, seeing the use, and beginning to take advantage of it. In 2011, we saw hospitals and other entities actually run production systems and applications within the cloud.  Here in 2012 we have the recognition for services beyond the basic applications, and how the cloud can speed up and improve the efficiencies of health systems and hospitals as they look to meet their goals. For us, Liaison plays in the integration and data harmonization areas, and our customers benefit from these services being run in the cloud. As a result of that, hospitals and other entities throughout the healthcare ecosystem can connect to one another and make sense of the information much faster because of this.

Dodge: Where can we find Liaison Technologies at HIMSS?

Palgon: We will be at booth #2375.

In the latest installment of our HIMSS12 blog series, John Tempesco of ICA is interviewed. John serves as chief marketing officer, is an ACHE and Life Management Institute Fellow, and has 34 years of healthcare experience. To view earlier installments please click here.

Dodge: What do you expect will be the theme of conversations at this year’s HIMSS show?

Tempesco: I think there will be three key threads that will run through the conference. One will be about ACOs, their value proposition, and how they will affect all kinds of technology, especially interoperability. This thread will give a good value-based reason for exchanging information, creating interoperability solutions and lead toward the next thread, which is value reimbursement.

Secondly, in addition to ACOs, there is a real focus on value-based reimbursement. Everyone wants to get out of piecework healthcare and start reimbursing healthcare based on results.

The last topic, since we are in an election year, will be about the politics of healthcare. There will be discussions about who will win the election, and what will happen to healthcare especially as it relates to healthcare IT. And, will there be a continued push for interoperability solutions, health information exchange, with the future of direct – all of those things that the current administration is pushing.

Dodge: How is ICA approaching its overall strategy for HIMSS?

Tempesco: Our strategy this year is to engage other vendors to be more collaborative in their approach to solving healthcare issues. None of us can do what is necessary to really change healthcare in isolation, so we want to engage as many vendors as possible to share data with each other in a way that will result in improved quality, reduced cost and satisfying patients, providers and payers. We believe that this approach will form that basis for the overall health IT industry to work toward a single goal of creating an infrastructure that will enable healthcare entities to form ACOs, gather necessary information and report back to payers, patients and employers as to whether or not they are getting value for the dollars they are spending.

Dodge: What are you looking forward to most this year at HIMSS and what are you hoping to gain from attending the conference?

Tempesco: We have two key areas we are looking forward to this year. The first is launching our new stepped approach to establishing rapid value-based interoperability across the healthcare continuum.  This approach defines and segments the steps necessary to achieve an ACO, a value-based reimbursement model or a private or public HIE. What we’ve seen in the past is that people are buying a solution they think will get them to HIE nirvana, when they aren’t conceptually ready for the many steps necessary to get them there, and they don’t see the actual success they’ve achieved along the way. What we’ve done is break our application into five solutions, some separate and some interconnected, all of which enable rapid deployment and results. They include a standards based interoperability solution; a communication capability; collaborative care enhancements that allow building on the first two and create advanced care coordination capabilities; data analysis and reporting; and a full ACO capability. We’re looking forward to rolling out this new CareAlign methodology, and showing the industry how to progress through those steps when creating an HIE or ACO.

The second big item, going back to our collaborative approach with other vendors, is launching our ICA Extreme Testing Center, or ICAetc. It is a free virtual playground where vendors can test their interoperability capabilities anytime. It is free, vendor-agnostic and allows end–to-end transactions between vendors without restrictions on scenarios or data elements. Vendors can see whether or not what they’re developing is going to meet the requirements of others in the marketplace.

Dodge: What can we expect to see in the HIE space in 2012?

Tempesco: Over the past year, it has become very difficult to define what exactly an HIE is. Last year HIE was a big theme of HIMSS and was a major part of most vendor booths. I believe we have now reached a tipping point in the industry. There are currently enough HIEs deployed that we’re beginning to see the same issues with sharing information among HIEs as we saw with vendors. There will be two major issues in the HIE space this year. The first is how to get the standards to work with each other so HIE and HIT vendors can share information in a collaborative way. The second is the question of where do we go from here.  Once there is information being shared, how can it be used to make a difference within healthcare by reducing costs and improving quality and satisfaction?

Dodge: Where can we find ICA at HIMSS12?

Tempesco: We’ll be at booth #4831 and our client Janet King, executive director/eHealth director of Middle Tennessee eHealth Connect/THA will be presenting a lecture on strategies for building a sustainable HIE through expansion and continuum-wide provider inclusion.

In the coming weeks, Dodge will be sharing a series of guest blog posts leading up to the HIMSS12 conference that will be taking place February 20-24, 2012 at the Venetian Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The blog series will allow a sampling of our clients to share their expectations for the show and comment on what 2012 holds for healthcare IT.

Dodge will be attending HIMSS12 and conducting interviews throughout the conference. We’re looking forward to sharing our experience with you.

Our first interview is with Kristen Heffernan who oversees the marketing of Henry Schein MicroMD Practice Management and EMR software. Heffernan joined the company three years ago.

Dodge: What do you think will be the theme of conversations at this year’s HIMSS conference?

Heffernan: I think the themes at this year’s conference will center on the hot topics in the industry – the things that still aren’t fully vetted out either by CMS and other healthcare regulatory organizations. We are still learning about healthcare information exchange and ACOs, specifically how they can best operate. One of the hottest topics I think will be about ACOs and interoperability between all of its parts, specifically health IT. As healthcare organizations take the first step of adoption towards EMR, healthcare analytics will be another big topic among attendees as they recognize the value of how to work with the wealth of accessible data that’s now being collected. And obviously, ICD-10 will also be a popular subject as we just made the leap into 5010, and now we’re focusing on how the industry will go about implementing ICD-10 and how it will impact the payers, the physicians, the clearinghouses and the hospitals.

Dodge: How is Henry Schein MicroMD approaching its overall strategy at HIMSS?

Heffernan: There are a wealth of opportunities for us at HIMSS: networking, continuing educational opportunities from the extensive programs, competitive research and more. Members representing all areas of our operations will be attending, each with their own goals and strategy for attending HIMSS this year.

Dodge: What are you looking forward to most this year at HIMSS and what are you hoping to gain from attending?

Heffernan: HIMSS provides us with the opportunity to meet with a lot of our existing clients and talk about ideas, as well as speak with new strategic partner vendors that can enhance how providers utilize our software. We also look for new software development ideas, along with anything that helps us improve our client relations and EMR implementation. We know that EMR implementation is a pain point, especially with providers new to using EMR, and our goal is to improve the user experience.

Dodge: How will current government regulations and the delay for stage 2 of meaningful use factor into the conference this year?

Heffernan: I think there will be a big sigh of relief at HIMSS for the delay of stage 2 meaningful use. Both providers and vendors have more time to adjust and have been given a little more leeway. There will be a lot of talk associated with payments; who is registered for the CMS incentive programs, who is receiving payments, and who is holding off and why.

Dodge: Where can people find Henry Schein MicroMD at HIMSS?

Heffernan: We’ll be at booth 13423.

I spoke with Mark Hagland, Editor in Chief at Healthcare Informatics, at the awards ceremony for the Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards Program held during HIMSS11 at the Loews Portofino Hotel and asked a little bit more about the program.

Dodge: Can you give our readers a quick history and overview of the Healthcare Informatics Innovator awards program?

Hagland: The Healthcare Informatics  Innovator Awards program has evolved considerably over the years. For a number of years, the program was focused on identifying one individual–a CIO or other health care IT leader–who had distinguished her/himself as an exceptional leader in health care IT. Beginning three years ago, the program shifted forward to honor three teams of leaders from different organizations, with winning teams being judged as having created IT-facilitated and -leveraged innovations that have improved care quality or patient safety, enabled clinician workflow, or facilitated financial or operational improvements. And, this year for the first time, the program was opened to non-hospital organizations; and indeed, the top three Innovator teams honored at Healthcare Informatics’ Innovator Awards reception in Orlando in February represented a hospital, a medical group, and a health information exchange, respectively.

The goal of the editors at Healthcare Informatics in sponsoring the Innovator Awards program is to recognize and honor innovation in health care that is IT-facilitated; the innovation involved can be clinically or non-clinically focused, but in either case, we want to shine a light on the innovation itself, and on those who have shown the leadership needed to use IT to facilitate that innovation.

Dodge: How did your judges select the winners this year, and what were the overwhelming programs that gave these winners the edge?

Hagland: In the cases of all three winning organizations this year, there were elements of individual personal leadership shown, as well as a visionary quality about their initiatives. CIO/CMIO George Reynolds, M.D., helped infuse the entire Children’s Hospital & Medical Center (Omaha) organization with a passion for using dashboards to analyze and improve performance–both clinical and non-clinical–enterprise-wide. At Southeast Texas Medical Associates, CEO Larry Holly, M.D., used a combination of dashboards and other IT tools to help his fellow physicians evaluate their management of the care of their patients, particularly those with chronic illnesses. and Devore Culver, executive director of HealthInfoNet, helped lead his fellow Maine health care IT leaders in creating a truly robust statewide health information exchange. In all three cases, the leaders of the teams honored had a vision of something greater than what had existed before, and moved forward with their vision, convincing colleagues to join them to build something new. Those were the elements that stood out for us at Healthcare Informatics.

Dodge: What should the vendors do to watch for potential award winners for 2012?

Hagland: Vendors can help us by reading the Innovator Awards cover story packages from the past three years in Healthcare Informatics (February 2011, March 2010, and April 2009), and then reach out to CIOs, CMIOs and other health care IT leaders at customer organizations that are doing really exceptional things and showing themselves to be particularly innovative. Vendors can’t submit to the program, but they can certainly work to identify outstanding customer organizations and encourage them to submit to next year’s program.

I just returned to my office in Atlanta after spending some time this week in sunny Orlando for the Annual HIMSS Conference. Ok, I was on the show floor inside the Orange County Convention Center for eight hours, but the weather outside was absolutely perfect!

While sitting in meetings with clients, ad reps and editors from Healthcare IT News, Health Data Management and Healthcare Purchasing News, I learned that this year’s HIMSS conference was the biggest to date with the number of attendees roughly at 31,000. It was my first HIMSS. Not my first tradeshow by any means, as I’ve worked many tech/telecom focused shows over the years, but this was HUGE.

As I walked for what seemed like miles across the trade show floor, I wondered, if I was a company exhibiting here, how could I attract people to visit my booth? Especially if my booth isn’t a 2-story mansion with video walls from floor to ceiling flashing my company’s name, taking up 3 rows of real estate on the floor. And how do I keep people’s attention long enough to learn what it is my company is trying to promote? After all, tradeshows are all about enhancing brand awareness, increasing sales leads and expanding your customer base, right?

When pulling together your tradeshow marketing plan, plan it out in three integrated communications stages: pre-show, during-show and post-show.

Pre-show

Get the word out to your customers and prospects that you’ll be exhibiting. Use a direct mail and email campaign promoting what your company is going to be announcing during the show. Promote some kind of giveaway you’ll have at the booth (such as a chance to win an Apple® iPad®) to entice customers to fill out a registration form and have to physically bring it to the booth.

During the show

Develop a strategy that makes your organization’s booth stand out from the others. This is probably the most important stage as you have the opportunity to directly reach thousands of people per day. Remember, many people did not receive your pre-show information.

If you can get just a few people to gather round, the small crowd will naturally attract more people until you’ve got a decent audience. Once the people are in your booth, it’s up to you to deliver the message and capture their information for lead generation!

Live entertainment, interactive activities, audio/visual presentations and friendly, knowledgeable staff are all very effective ways to help attract foot traffic to your booth.

Here are a couple of booths I noticed at HIMSS that seemed to successfully generate traffic.

NextGen – Splash Artists
This was very cool. “Splash” artists created sports themed paintings throughout the day. Two artists worked on the same painting together, dancing to music and ‘splashing’ the canvas with paint. The neat thing is that they would paint the picture upside down and at the end spin it upright to reveal the finished painting. While the artists did their thing, a gentleman talked to the audience comparing the two artists working together to how the company’s solutions work together.

A member of the audience could win one of the final paintings – but only if they stayed for a NextGen product demonstration. Making people stay for a demo before they can enter to win a prize is an excellent way to capture leads. It can help weed out the serious leads from the people who just want something for free.

This particular booth attraction created quite a buzz. I heard several groups of people talk about this throughout the conference center.

OnBase – Sports Bar & Grill
This was one of my favorites. Perhaps it’s because I’m a huge baseball/sports fan. Or maybe because I also enjoy the frequent pub from time to time. Anyway, the two coupled together caught my eye. They literally had a full bar (and a good sized bar at that) in the middle of their booth with plenty of bar stools. Every time I walked by, people were going in and pulling up a chair. I can’t blame them – you’re feet get really sore walking this trade show floor.

While seated, company representatives would come up and chat with you about their solutions. People didn’t seem to mind the quick elevator pitch as long as they were bellied up to the bar and off their feet.

Overall, it was simple, not very flashy, but extremely effective as there was a continuous steady flow of traffic. A steady flow of traffic equals a steady flow of leads. I later found out that OnBase has used this booth set up for quite some time now. I guess ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

Other booth attractions I saw that were successful at drawing crowds:

• the gymnasts from Cirque Du Soleil – if you’ve seen a Cirque show, you know how amazing these performers are
• a wall of arcade games – definitely eye catching; who doesn’t want to take a timeout to play free video games
• an electric vehicle from Tesla motors – the newest and coolest, electric sports car – you do not expect to see a car on the show floor at HIMSS
• a flash mob dancing to hip-hop – I don’t think we’ll see them on Dancing with the Stars anytime soon but it sure did create quite a buzz – and many puzzled looks
• and of course magicians – about as sure of a thing you can hire; people are fascinated by magicians – very interactive with the audience

After-show

Follow up with your leads within two weeks of the tradeshow ending. An email including highlights from your company’s success during the show (along with some product/service brochures if requested) is a great way to continue the conversation you had with a prospect. For solid leads, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call them, thanking them for stopping by.

What has your organization done to attract people to the booth during a tradeshow? What was your favorite booth this year at HIMSS? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

One of the most challenging elements of marketing communications is that it can be VERY subjective. When vendors are considering their investment to exhibit at a conference like HIMSS11, how important is it to have a brand new booth? Sure, it’s cool, but also expensive. Does the incremental investment bring in a commensurate number of leads into the booth? And how on earth do you measure that? How about a question like, “Thanks for coming into our booth. Would you have come by if our booth was 20% less cool? 40% less cool?” Didn’t think so.

So, no disrespect intended, let us acknowledge our best and worst of HIMSS awards. Don’t forget, there were more than 1,000 exhibitors, so if you think you were the worst in a category that we awarded to someone else, it’s probably because we didn’t see you. Which is for another conversation altogether on visibility.

WORST IMAGERY: The see-through head with colored veins running down to the spine at Cattails Software. Turns out that the entire brand identity is centered on the see-through head. Maybe it appeals to physicians. Not us.

MOST SURPRISINGLY NICE THEATER AREA: CDW. Very engaging, close to the aisle, nice little talk-show-interview area off to the side and very clean presentation technology.

WORST SIGNAGE: Merge Healthcare. A whole backdrop of patents that the company holds, we guess. They were too small to read, but big enough to look like we were supposed to be able to read them. If we hadn’t asked the guy what they were, we’d have never known. Lost opportunity.

MOST OBVIOUS CASE OF LITTLE-BOOTH-IN-A-BIG-SPACE: Healthwise. Refer back to our comments in the opening paragraph. Our opinion: if you’re going to the black tie event, you gotta spring for the tux.

MOST OVERUSED BRIBERY TOOL: The Apple® iPAD®. We lost count of how many vendors had stacks of them that they’d give/raffle to attendees who’d listen to the pitch. And don’t get us started talking about the misuse of the trademark.

WORST FASHION STATEMENT: As in the shortest skirt. As in who thought that was a good idea? We saw her at the ACS booth. We thought that booth babes had toned it down? Maybe their parent Xerox forced them into it.

WORST FLOOR PLAN FAUX-PAS: HIMSS interoperability showcase was WAYYY at the end of the hall, and it was a really cool exhibit. If you went a little bit past it, you’d be at Cape Canaveral. We think it should be the absolute center of the show floor.

HONORABLE MENTION FOR LONGEST USE OF THE TRUSS BOOTH: We’re sure there were OLDER booths in the hall, but nothing says 1990 like a booth built using trusses. We guess they’re still paying off the loan. Award goes to  ESRI. At least the booth staff wasn’t wearing leg warmers.

MOST OVERUSED ICON: The world. As in global healthcare. Get it? ESRI wins it again. Mainly because we didn’t write down the others.

MOST BLATANT DISREGARD FOR TRADEMARKS: This list is entirely too long to publish. For a taste, go here. What was so surprising is that every one of these companies would go ballistic is their own IP or trademarks were compromised similarly.

BEST GIVEAWAY THAT THE DODGE TEAM WANTED TO WIN: The waverunner at the SCC booth. We’re looking up SCC on Google, and once again are stumped by the acronym that’s shared by a zillion other organizations. Is it Spokane Community College? (first result) Scottsdale Community College? (second result) Seminole State College? (third result, and it’s not even an SCC!) Did you already see our opinions on the strength of acronyms in healthcare brands? So, we had to go to the HIMSS pocket guide to figure out who the winner is. SCC is SCC Soft Computer.

FRESHEST GRAPHICS: IBM. We know it’s a challenge to have noticeable graphics at a behemoth conference like HIMSS. We think IBM did a nice job. Colorful. Different. Link to healthcare.

BEST NOT-FEELING-THE-THEME: Epic. The stacked stone, jewel tones, solid-walled booth is obviously very expensive to build, ship and store. We felt like we were in the past. Does anyone care?

BEST NEW BOOTH DESIGN: We have to say that we liked the way that the long, narrow Moss headers were used in a number of new booths to pull the exhibits together without cramping the space. Allscripts and Ingenix both did a nice job at this.

All in all, we were thrilled to have a dozen of our employees at HIMSS11 meeting with clients, editors and others. We thought it was a great show and look forward to 2012 in Las Vegas.

Here are five unique ways that the Apple® iPad® trademark is being displayed at HIMSS11. Which company did their homework and got it right?

Allscripts:

Emdeon:

Scale Computing:

BMJ Group:

TeleTracking:

Quality 101: Quality 101 is a new site developed by the HIMSS Patient Safety & Quality Outcomes Committee to help healthcare vendors and providers understand the details of quality measurement and improvement as it relates to EHRs and meaningful use incentives. The site is divided into several sections, such as The Basics, Key Industry Players and Public Reporting, and it serves as an aggregator, providing updated information and data from several resources. New phases of the site will be rolled out each quarter.

Past Words of the Week
MedlinePlus, HITSphere, URL X-ray, Mashup, Blog Talk Radio, TweetedRanks, Ping.fm, Digsby, Qik, Posterous, Ning, API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags

The Fifth Annual National Health IT Week is being held June 14 -18, 2010 in Washington, DC. Join us for this collaborative forum where public and private healthcare constituents will work in partnership to educate industry and policy stakeholders on the value of health IT for the US healthcare system. Now, with the enactment of economic stimulus and healthcare reform legislation, there is no better time for the health IT community to come together under one umbrella to raise national awareness!