(online version)

Also, if you too are attending HIMSS11, please feel free to contact me if you would like to meet-up and grab some coffee. I can be reached at: eddie@uberops.com or @gonzalezloumiet.

-Regards,
Eduardo

Day 1 – Sunday, February 20, 2011

HIMSS Latino Initiative Workgroup Kick Off

My participation in HIMSS11 started off with an exciting event, kicking off the newly formed HIMSS Latino Initiative Workgroup. The event, organized by Luis Belen from Medic Success and Danny Vargas from VarCom, was standing room only. Some of the speakers and panelists were:

• Dr. David Hunt, Chief Medical Officer, ONC for Health IT
• Commander David Dietz, Office of Minority Health
• Marcia Thomas-Brown, Program Manager for the National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved
• Dr. Joxel Garcia, President, Ponce School of Medicine, Puerto Rico REC
• H. Stephen Lieber, HIMSS President/CEO

The evening was spent with Brian Ramos of ThinkCreative and Shane Molinari of MTS. We spoke about innovation in health IT, medical banking,  and healthcare business strategy.

More pictures can be found here.

Day 2 – Monday, February 21, 2011

The day started off at 8am by listening to 3 E-Sessions provided by HIMSS. They were a quick (30mins each) way to learn about a topic. The sessions were:

• E-Session on Ascension Health EMR demo by AllScripts
• E-Session on Integrated IT Strategic Planning in Tough Economic Times
• E-Session on Successfully selecting and integrating with an EHR.

I then attended my first session, A Project Manager’s Guide To Integration Projects. The Department of Clinical Research Informatics at NIH-CC has successfully implemented multiple interfaces between applications. They shared some of their lessons learned like dealing with technical and business project sponsors. Also, Ryan shared some advice on messages flow documentation and why project managers should know “some” HL7.

Speakers: Susan Houston and Ryan Kennedy

The slides were quite good and they can be found here: http://www.himssconference.org/docs/sphandouts/4.pdf

I spent the rest of the day walking through the exhibit halls. I met with several organizations like Orion (Uber Operations strategic partner) and AllScripts, one of the most popular EHR solution providers in the nation.

With John Dunn from Orion

More pictures can be found here.

Here is a video of my tour of the Exhibit Hall.

Day 3 – Tuesday, February 22, 2011

——————–

Day 4 – Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The day started off with talks by Health and Human Services Secretary, Sebelius and ONC leader Dr Blumenthal. Also, HIMSS announced stats from their Annual Report, like having 31,000 members and having a net income of 2.5 million.

Kathleen Sebelius

I then attended a workshop titled: CDC Informatics: Building Value at Public Health – Health Care Interface.

The rest of the afternoon was spent meeting with several people/orgs like:

• Clearwave
• MedicSuccess
• National Health Information Technology for the Underserved (NHIT)
  
• Tactical Management
• Former NBA player, entrepreneur

The conference will include information on:

• Health Information Technology and how it can benefit Hispanics/Latinos
• Diseases and Conditions that disproportionally affect Hispanics/Latinos
• Improving services to, outcomes of, and relationships with Hispanic/Latino clients
• Job opportunities in the health care field for Hispanics/Latinos and the general population alike
• Much more…

Speakers currently include:

• Ana Viamonte-Ros, M.D., M.P.H., Florida State Surgeon General
• Jose Rodriguez, M.D., Florida State University’s College of Medicine Associate Professor
• Dr. Shairi R. Turner, M.D., M.P.H., Deputy Secretary for Health Director, Office of Minority Health, Florida Department of Health.
• Monica Hayes, Ed.D., MSW, MAT, Assistant Director, Office of Minority Health, Florida Department Of Health
• Frans de Wet, Managing Partner, Uber Operations
• Linda Nelson, Health IT Consultant
• Luis Belen, Founder, MedicSuccess
  
• Eduardo Gonzalez Loumiet, MBA, PMP, Managing Director, Uber Operations

Date: November 19, 2010
Time: 8:00am – 5:00pm
Location: Neighborhood Health Services Inc, 438 West Brevard Street Suite 11, Tallahassee, FL 32301
Event Web Site: http://hhc.thlpe.org/

About Über Operations:
Founded in 2004 in Tallahassee, Florida, Über Operations is a leading provider of health care IT services. They provide the integration services for several large private and public organizations, including: Florida Department of Health, Texas Department of State Health Services, Mercy Hospital of Miami, Mayo Medical Labs, Association of Public Health Laboratories, and the University of Washington. Über Operations team members are experts in various technologies, such as Orion Health’s Rhapsody, Cloverleaf, Mirth, LabWare, PHINMS, and NHIN CONNECT, to name a few. Über Operations is nationally recognized by the Association Public Health Labs (APHL) and the CDC as their choice to architect, develop, host, and support the PHLIP RnR health information exchange Hub. For more information on Über Operations please visit www.ÜberOps.com .

About THLPE:
The Tallahassee Hispanic/Latino Professionals & Entrepreneurs, Inc. is a 100% volunteer, community-based organization working together to strengthen the network of professionals and entrepreneurs in the Hispanic/Latino community and to promote opportunities for Hispanics/Latinos of all ages through leadership, scholarship, service, and diversity.  We are dedicated to helping make Tallahassee a city where Hispanic/Latino professionals can excel via networking, socializing and expanding their professional horizons. We host a variety of activities throughout the Tallahassee area to attract Hispanic/Latino professionals and Entrepreneurs to our community and to help existing local businesses expand their businesses to market to the Hispanic/Latino community. These events include the Business and Entrepreneurship Summit, a Hispanic Health Forum, “how to” educational sessions, professional development luncheons, and other opportunities to participate or volunteer in community events.
www.thlpe.org

Standards/Implementation Specifications/Certification Criteria: http://www.ofr.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2010-17210_PI.pdf

Contact: HHS Press Office
(202) 690-6343

HHS Launches New Blog: Health IT Buzz

Dr. David Blumenthal, HHS’ National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, today announced the launch of Health IT Buzz, a new blog that will allow readers to learn more about health information technology (health IT) and provide a space for consumers, providers, policymakers, and technology experts to share their ideas and concerns regarding health IT. The blog is available at http://healthit.hhs.gov/blog/onc.

Dr. Blumenthal will hold a conference call with members of the media on Tuesday, November 24, to discuss the blog and the availability of new grants to strengthen the health IT workforce.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included historic new resources to improve health care through advances in health IT and provided incentives to hospitals and providers who meaningfully use health information technology.  Health IT has the potential to improve the quality of care for patients and make care more efficient.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s activities that will be discussed on Health IT Buzz include:

• Activities to advance standards to achieve interoperability, which will ensure accurate and widespread exchange of health information;
• Evaluation of new options for the certification of electronic health records;
• Exploration of health IT related regulatory and guidance initiatives to protect  the privacy and security of health information;  and,
• An assessment of critical privacy and security issues.

Information regarding the conference call on Tuesday is included below.

WHEN:                       November 24, 2009
                                    9:30 a.m. EST

DIAL-IN:                   888-390-0868
Passcode: ONC

Note: This call is for members of the media only.

Entrepreneurs
Maureen Farrell, 08.27.08, 7:00 PM ET

Advances in health care run the gamut from mind-boggling medicines to simple Web solutions that, if adopted, could slice huge slabs of fat from a bloated system.

Whatever form innovation takes in the coming years, much of it will spring from start-ups, not pharma and tech giants. “Little companies can work on something that’s not proven and that has a higher risk,” says Brenda Gavin, founding partner of Quaker BioVentures in Philadelphia and former director of GlaxoSmithKlein’s venture fund. If they can find enough funding, entrepreneurs “basically can go for the gold.”

But it’s not just the risk of failure that hampers big companies’ search for game-changing breakthroughs. It’s the constant demand to generate revenue in the here and now to cover all the overhead and hit aggressive growth targets.

In Pictures: Seven Technologies That Could Change Health Care

“Small companies are much more nimble, so they can react quickly,” says Jack Lasersohn, a partner in the Vertical Group, a Summit, N.J., venture capital fund that specializes in medical technology and biotechnology. “You take an idea, and a few months later you can have a company.”

Another structural issue: Health care is an extremely splintered industry. Many new areas of research–such as personalized medicine and digital document retrieval–don’t fit neatly into established divisions within big companies, ultimately thwarting capital investment.

“Too many investors have failed to understand what health care is as an industry,” says Ralph Sabin, a managing director at Pacific Venture Group in San Diego. “[It] isn’t like financial services or manufacturing. It’s an area dominated by nurses, physicians, hospitals and insurance companies and all kinds of different constituencies.”

All of that spells huge opportunities for tech-savvy start-ups–and new hope for sick patients in need of better, less expensive care.

Philadelphia-based Hx Technologies wants to unlock the power of computer networks (a very ’90s concept) and suck costs out of the system by making it easier to transport diagnostic images like CT scans. Amazingly, shuttling these images to doctors for second and third opinions is still done the old-fashioned way–by hand. That can lead to duplicative and potentially dangerous testing. (Hence President George Bush’s mandate that a majority of Americans have electronic health records by 2014.)

Launched in 2000, Hx Technologies estimates that it can eliminate extra tests–and save the U.S. medical system $5 billion to $6 billion a year–by storing medical images so they can be accessed in encrypted form over the Internet. Hx collects setup fees and monthly rent from insurance companies to use the system; doctors and hospitals use it for fee. Tommy Thompson, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sits on the board.

The challenge: For this technology to truly take off, Hx will have to blanket the entire hospital system–and that may take a bit more than the $5 million it’s managed to raise thus far from investors including the National Institutes of Health, RK Ventures and Next Stage Capital.

Nurses don’t need to schlep bandages and food–robots can do it better and cheaper, figures Aethon, a Pittsburgh-based developer of mobile robots that use radio frequency identification technology to track and fetch medical supplies. Founded in 2002, the company has raised about $22 million from the likes of Draper Triangle Ventures and Pacific Venture Group.

Aethon’s robots, which it leases for between $1,500 and $2,000 a month, now zip throughout the hallways and supply closets of 100 hospitals in the U.S. Among them: “Tug,” a self-navigating, battery-powered bot the size of a small suitcase that attaches directly to hospital carts and can carry up to 800 pounds. Tug can pick up, sort and deliver medical supplies and meals and run blood samples to labs; he can even ride elevators and open doors.

If you think that stuff is straight out of Star Trek, how about “growing” new organs from the very patients that need them? Launched in 2004, Tengion, based in East Norriton, Pa., aims to do just that.

The process: A doctor takes a tissue sample from a diseased organ and sends it to Tengion’s facility. There, the cells responsible for growth of new tissue are reproduced in a biodegradable “scaffold” made in the shape of the diseased portion of the organ. Several weeks later, surgeons implant the new organ/scaffold structure, leaving the patient’s body to absorb the new organ and excrete the scaffold. Unlike those who receive organ transplants, Tengion’s patients, in theory, won’t need to be on a lifetime regimen of anti-rejection medicine.

So far, the company has invented a way of making a “neo-bladder” based on a patient’s own tissue, and has filed for 70 patents covering the entire process. It plans to eventually move into manufacturing other organs and tissues, including kidneys, blood vessels, hearts, livers and nerves.

Tengion has already raised $150 million in total financing from the likes of Bain Capital, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (the consumer giant’s VC arm), Oak Investment Partners and Quaker BioVentures. Not that success is right around the corner–the FDA won’t approve the process until early next decade, says Gary Sender, Tengion’s chief financial officer.

Then there’s the whole push toward truly personalized medicine, which could fundamentally alter the way diseases are diagnosed and treated. Until now, doctors have relied on the law of averages: Clinical drug trials yield data on how many people are helped by a particular treatment; if the success rate is high enough, that treatment gets the nod.

But as the human genome is better understood, it’s becoming apparent that diseases like cancer can be treated in specific ways, based on a patient’s individual genetic code. “Nothing should cause us to expect that one person’s cancer or arthritis or heart disease is like other patients,” says Brook Byers, partner at the Menlo Park, Calif. venture giant Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. “Standardized treatments will shift to personalized and tailored ones with better outcomes and lower costs.” Personalized medicine has been Kleiner Perkins’ primary area of investment for its life sciences division.

Take its bet on fellow Menlo Park resident Pacific Biosciences. The company is working on a machine that doesn’t just identify DNA strands, but can understand, based on a few drops of blood, how the strands are manufactured, so that they can be sequenced (copied) faster–dramatically speeding up the race for a host of powerful cures. Sequencing a person’s entire DNA now takes about about three years; Pacific Biosciences thinks it can cut the time to three hours.

“If you could sequence people’s DNA thousands of times faster, you could make disease research a software problem,” says chief executive Hugh Martin.

Perfecting that process may take a while. Pacific doesn’t expect its $300,000 to $500,000 machines to hit the market before 2013–but white-shoe investors, including Kleiner Perkins, MDV-Mohr Davidow Venture, and, more recently, Intel, have ponied up $178 million to make it happen.

In Pictures: Seven Technologies That Could Change Health Care