HIMSS 2017: Buzzword Roundup

Greetings all!

Glad to be back from a dizzying couple of days at HIMSS 2017, the annual see and be seen conference in the Health tech world, where prestige is measured in convention floor square footage and carpet depth (at least one vendor area felt awfully reminiscent of a bouncy house).  Having not been in about 10 years, HIMSS has become a rather dizzying affair.

This year the buzzwords seems to coalesce into 4 related concepts, neatly placed on nearly everyone's marketing materials:

1. Value-based care

2. Population Health

3. Big data

4. Machine learning/AI

One gentleman I met on the floor suggested that all of the presenting companies could have agreed on one booth with one pattern of signage given the convergence.

Anyhow, if you look deeply into those four buzzwords (buzz phrases?), it would seem that the direction of clinical care is artificial intelligence supporting groups paid to take care of populations.  Individual clinicians and patients were nowhere to be found. Not entirely surprising f…