LAS VEGAS — The 2016 HIMSS Conference & Exposition starts out with a double-threat of keynoters Monday evening, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, and Dell founder, chairman and CEO Michael Dell.
While it's unlikely that either one will make any game-changing announcements, both are likely to offer nuggets that attract the attention of attendees. Burwell, in the last year of running Health & Human Services under the Obama administration, still has some time to try to enact changes under the Affordable Care Act before who knows what will happen under the new president.
Dell, meanwhile, should have some relevant thoughts for vendors in attendance on how to build a business in a competitive, fast-growing business, as he did with personal computers in the 1980s.
The interest in health information technology has not waned with the drop in federal electronic health record incentive funds. A sign of that can be found in a video interview with HIMSS President and CEO Stephen Lieber, who says attendance by hospital C-suite executives is up by 10 percent or more.
One way to feed that desire for metrics on the state of the field is to participate in this year's Most Wired survey. The survey is one of the ways hospitals and health systems can gauge their status relative to their peers, and the more that participate, the more useful it can be.
Visit H&HN Daily all this week for coverage of the HIMSS conference.
