2009 National Users’ Conference

The Venetian | Las Vegas, NV
September 12 - 15, 2009

Conference
Recap

Pre-Conf | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Day 2 (Sept 14, 2009)

Great Minds Think Alike

We started today with a keynote panel featuring John Halamka, MD, Micky Tripathi, PhD, Jesse Singer, and William Biggs, MD, for what was sure to be a riveting panel. Girish moderated this esteemed collection of thought leaders through a discussion on:

1. Meaningful use and the stimulus dollars
2. Community deployment of EHR systems
3. Improving quality of care using EHR tools
4. Impact an EHR system has had to a private practice physician

One take away point from this discussion includes states are becoming more involved in healthcare projects due to the stimulus funding. Dr. Biggs has been working with the state of Texas to help ensure they are able to optimize the opportunities presented by the stimulus. Tripathi and Halamka are on their way to Washington, D.C., on a project that Halamka will discuss soon on his blog (geekdoctor.blogspot.com).

As with all disruptive technologies, there can be challenges to interoperability. Tripathi showed a New York Times article from 1901 that discussed how two million people used the telephone – 70% with Bell and 30% were split among 2800 closed exchanges. People bought phones in pairs to they can connect with that one person. Technologies that we take for granted today started somewhere.

During lunch, some lucky attendees walked away with raffle prizes. A small sampling of the items included a shopping gift certificate in the Venetian, a free pass to next year’s conference, 24” monitors and a 50” flat panel TV. Our exhibitors were very generous with supplying the raffle items and we want to take this opportunity to thank them.

Some of today’s session topics included optimizing practice workflows, establishing the foundation for CDSS, chronic care management, health exchange standards, case studies from customers and sessions focused on knowledge sharing.

eCW Central was again packed with eager customers looking to learn more about their systems and sign up for additional services.

Our last full day of the conference concluded with a “Great Minds Think Alike…Follow Suit” networking event for customers to meet and connect with peers.

See you all in the morning!