This is a big year for health care IT and former president Bill Clinton’s opening keynote at the HIMSS13 (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference demonstrates the magnitude the event, catering to the sector, taking place March 3-7 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, La.

“I have the honor of introducing President Bill Clinton,” says Willa Fields, HIMSS Board Chair. “I think it is fabulous we have him as a keynote speaker at the conference. He is such a world leader and I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say about health information technology.”

Another speaker, Eric Topol, director of Scripps Translational Science Institute and Scripps Health’s chief academic officer, will be addressing the recent push to give consumers access to all of their own relevant medical information -- this will help to eventually drive individualized health care.

"A sea change in medicine has finally taken hold — medicine is going digital and we're seeing it with an extraordinary proliferation of innovative, wearable biosensors and accurate, affordable genome sequencing,” Topol told DOTmed Business News.

Among other topics on offer to health care IT professionals, clinicians and executives at this year’s conference are: implementing Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements; accelerating new reimbursement and payment processes for ICD-10; ICD-10 and HIPPA 5010 compliance mandates; the Global Health Initiative; the latest innovations in health IT; patient engagement and more.

In total, nearly 1,100 exhibitors will be representing thousands of health IT products, with 250 new products and services being launched through interactive kiosks.

What this year’s exhibitors are excited about
“VitalHealth is really looking forward to our participation in the Health Story Project at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase. This project will showcase the patient’s clinical journey from initial symptoms to referral, diagnosis, treatment, discharge and follow-up care via demonstrations that highlight the interoperability between vendors representing the different stages in the care process - primary care, clinic, specialist, hospital, and so on. We are also excited to sit in on mhealth sessions and presentations on current topics such as ACOs and Meaningful Use.” Blair Butterfield, president, VitalHealth

"HIMSS is always a great time to network with others in this industry. Innovation, shared knowledge with peers and updates on those things affecting health care IT are always big draws. Two issues on the privacy and security front that are guaranteed to profoundly affect health care IT in 2013 are the continued effects of breaches and third party risks. My presentation with Jutta Williams from Intermountain Healthcare on Business Associates should be very timely and is definitely geared to provide practical advice on how to manage these risks. Last year we found that many providers were interested in talking about how to better manage the risks associated with third parties, this year with the Omnibus Rule likely to be out soon I'd expect venders will also be very interested as well." Mac McMillan, CEO, CynergisTek Inc.

"CareTech had a great show at HIMSS last year, and this year promises to be even more impactful. We are seeing a huge spike in demand for outsourced services, and we expect that interest to be reflected in the activity at HIMSS. IT initiatives related to Meaningful Use, ICD-10, HIE and ACO have IT departments so overwhelmed right now, that they are in desperate need of expert outsourced support to handle the increased workload." Jim Giordano, president and CEO, CareTech Solutions

"One of the big differences we expect to see at this year's event is going to be much more interest in patient-centered medical home. With ACO and other aspects of reform moving ahead now, and recent research pointing to better outcomes at lower cost with PCMH, we expect a lot of interest there. Our customers are focusing on that area as well as ACO and tapping into HIEs, so we will be talking a lot about the interoperability challenges around PCMH and HIE and how to provide access to accurate and complete patient information." Richard Garcia, VP of marketing, NextGate

"As a big data company, we are encouraged to see the health care industry gravitate towards data analytics as an answer for doing population health management and quality and cost analytics, as well as support patient centered medical home and accountable care initiatives. At HIMSS13, Explorys will emphasize and demonstrate the value of big data and how benchmarking provides more effective comparative analysis and optimization. We will also be exhibiting new comparative analytics that can only be produced with a massive dataset as large as the Explorys Network. We expect a lot of excitement around the ability to monitor and assess key performance indicators both within an organization as well as across other health care organizations to improve overall quality of care." Charlie Lougheed, president and chief strategy officer, Explorys