HIMSS Canceled Amid Coronavirus – What Can Healthcare IT Take Away?

With the announcement of the HIMSS conference cancellation the healthcare IT industry is hit hard. Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is the super bowl of healthcare tech. 45,000 attendees from 50 countries were scheduled to fly into Orlando and spend 5 days immersed in innovative healthcare tech – and of course, shop around on the Expo floor. For many companies, the HIMSS event is the lifeline of their sales pipeline for the entire year – we’re talking tons of leads. Not having HIMSS means major threats to healthcare technology company revenue. We need to be more prepared to deal with pandemics no matter what. And as an industry, we need to be focused on developing technology solutions for disease detection, tracking, and prevention. And we need greater emphasis on data interoperability. Every time a crisis happens, the world is reminded of why it’s so important for systems and entities to share information. We learned this lesson when 9/11 happened. Data interoperability can help us identify problems earlier and get a handle on mitigation before issues get out of control.