Besides all of the cool technology and clever folks, HIMSS was quite an eye-opening event as the country’s healthcare discussion drags on ad infinitum. For those of you who think you know all the facts around the healthcare debate, check out the opening remarks of Barry Chaiken, MD, one of the head guys at HIMSS – scary! Interestingly, most of the problems and inefficiencies we continuously hear about had solutions on display at HIMSS. It would appear that integrated, ubiquitous solutions can in fact cure many of our major health care ills.
Some of what I saw at the show that fell broadly within the convergence space and were kind of neat or at least surprising. Such as: Some of these are Sprint partners of various type, others just had solutions I thought made sense.
A mobile application called mVisum that allows the secure transmission of patient data to mobile devices like PDAs. It can push all types of medical graphics and data (ultrasound movies, EKGs, CT Scans, etc.) directly to a mobile clinician, allowing an immediate analysis and response. Nothing like being diagnosed from the 13th tee!
Cisco had a large “presence” (UC joke, ha ha) at HIMSS and was showing some really neat stuff beyond their usual premises-based IP PBX equipment. Cisco is ready now with a full UC suite, and of course it’s hard not to be wowed by the whole telepresence product suite
Cloud computing, SaaS, hosted services … you can’t go to a trade show anymore where those offerings aren’t featured. One company I talked to was nGenX. It has a pretty cool and comprehensive suite of offerings that span industries, and I particularly liked this company because it works with many of the same partners we do – Microsoft, Cisco, HP, RIM, and more
IBM had a massive presence at HIMSS as you would expect! Side note -I was in a meeting once where a senior exec asked a silly question that made me chuckle silently : Q. Can IBM possibly do this for us? A. (unspoken) Of course they can you idiot, they’re IBM! Well, we’ve worked on some healthcare stuff with IBM in the past and they CAN pretty much do everything – wired, wireless, RFID, hosting, … go to www.ibm.com/healthcare to see for yourself
Creative Labs was in the Sprint booth just killing the video solutions over 4G. They have a whole new set of unbelievable video solutions that are remarkably inexpensive given the quality. We are not far from video anywhere and everywhere – it will be just like CSI!
Plantronics was also there. This is just a plug for a product that I use every day – Bluetooth headsets. For my OCS UC solution I use the Savi Go headset with the BUA 200 adapter (best one I have used by a wide margin, excellent voice quality and unbelievable range, comfortable to wear); I use a separate unit for my mobile device, a Plantronics Voyager Pro – again, great voice quality, range and it is the most comfortable Bluetooth headset I’ve ever used. For all you IT guys out there, don’t go cheap on the UC deployments – give everyone a Savi Go. Take a look at www.plantronics.com (probably lots of newer stuff than I have).
The Microsoft presence at the show was truly shocking. Huge booth, lots of bodies and some really impressive solutions. As I discussed in an earlier entry, there is a huge focus within healthcare on the “remote” patient; and the monitoring and treatment of chronic disease (nice time for us Sprint guys to have the best and fastest data network). Microsoft had a joint press release on a pilot with the Cleveland Clinic for managing chronic disease – amazing stuff. Also a neat system called “Amalga Unified Intelligence” – read all about it at www.microsoft.com/amalga.
This whole healthcare system that surrounds us is a mess right now – and the politicians seem destined to debate this until they all drop (or we do – their preferred alternative). But Sprint has the converged IP networks in place now to work with this industry to move things forward. It was gratifying that our CEO Dan Hesse was the kickoff keynote for the event; and that Sprint has an entire team devoted to health care solutions; and that Sprint’s booth was knee deep in our business unit presidents, VPs and directors – all of them committed to optimizing Sprint’s wireless and wireline assets to the benefit of the healthcare industry. See the whole story – it’s a good one - at www.sprint.com/healthcare. Check out these links as well to read what others are saying about mobility in healthcare: Mobile Health News, eWeek, FierceWireless, FierceHealth IT, Medical SmartPhone, Health Imaging, Wireless Healthcare News, WirelessWeek, and FierceMobile Healthcare.
Next up is VoiceCon in Orlando – where I’ll be sure to spend some time trying to talk the old telco boys off the ledge! Should any customers out there require that I play golf with them in Orlando in order to cement Sprint’s advantaged relationship with your company, let me know – because with Sprint, customer service is our number one priority!!!
