HIMSS11

This post is just a short review of my week at HIMSS11.

Friday:  Fly out, finished reading Information Retrieval: A Health and Biomedical Perspective, get to hotel, don't bother to go to Interoperability Showcase Booth because there's nothing for me to do until there's power and a network.  Write a review of the book.

Saturday:  I headed over at the booth around 8:00.  It's still a NOTwork, instead of a Network, but most people are here. Start handing out fun ribbons, and decided that I'm going to be a rock star this week.  After about four hours, I install the latest version of the software in 15 minutes, and I'm done.  I hang out for another 4 hours before heading back to the hotel.  Off to the EHRA Meeting and Dinner, where I and others recieve recognition from the EHRA.  Listened to Doug Fridsma talk about the S&I Framework.  Wrote a post on the Year in Review for Doug.

Sunday:  It's off to the Interoperability Workshop where I'm giving the shpeil on IHE Building blocks for interoperability.  Head back over to the showcase to see how things are going.  It's all going well.  Catch up with Joyce Sensmeir and Robin Raiford and we try to make plans for a photo shoot on the bike I'm going to rent this week. Then it's over to the GE Booth briefly and back to the showcase.  Around 5, I head to the opening reception briefly, where I run into about 3 people who've read the blog, and a number of recovering HITSP-ites.  Head off to the GE Kickoff dinner.  Got the question on "What is a tweetup?" correct.  Then it's back to the HIMSS reception to pick up the Sushi crowd for dinner at Seito Sushi.  Excellent meal, great prices, great saki list, and fresh wasabi, at least 4 out of 5 on our ranking table.

Monday:  Opening day.  Meet up for breakfast with the CDS Consortium.  Have an EHRA meeting, and then off to Eagle Rider to pick up my transport for the next two days. Use my tweetup question award to get some cheap eye protection.  Back at the Interoperability Showcase booth by 10:30.  Meetup with Ceasar Torres (@HIMSS on Twitter), who finds out I have a bike for a couple of days.  He comes up with the idea of rolling it into the Social Media Center.  Catch up with Arien Malec and we make plans to meet up later on S&I Framework stuff.  Say hello to Doug again.  Lose Joyce and Robin, so no photo shoot today.  Tomorrow is about recognition, so I write a post on what David Tao has done in the Interoperability space.

Tuesday: A crazy day, packed with stuff.  The day starts off with me learning that Ceasar made it happen via a tweet by Brian Ahier, and better yet, he's made the link to the missed photo op with Joyce on the bike.   Then I'm off with an EHRA meeting with Arien Malec, in which we come out with some good ideas.  In general, the whole notion of Direct is about simple messaging for simple uses as part of the glide path to EHR and HIE where you can do more complex things.   Back to the showcase, where I finish lining up details with Ceasar.  Dr. Blumenthal is at the Showcase, so it's a pretty packed place.  I head over to find Sandy (who runs the showcase for HIMSS) and as I walk up, Farzad Mostashari reaches out to shake my hand and shouts "Motorcycle guy!" OK, I know he's listening at least.  I shake hands with Dr. Blumenthal also and they head out.  At 1:30 we roll the bike in, and quickly take shots of Joyce and Robin on it.  The tweetup goes quite well.  I catch up with Wes Rishel and we talk about greenCDA for about 10 minutes before he has to run off to another meeting.  Then it's back over to the Social Media Center where I give a presentation on metrics and blogging.  You can find more detailed information from that presentation here.  Then it was off to Universal's Islands of Adventure for the GE Tweetup.  We did the Spiderman ride and the Incredible Hulk.  Some people even went back for a second run on the Hulk, which after a day of having only Mountain Dew for lunch and coffee for breakfast was too much for me.

Wednesday:  Whoever thought it was a good idea to pack my calendar with back-to-back-to-back meetings at Hall E, Hall A, Hall E, Hall C, Hall A and back to Hall E needs to be instructed on how long it takes to walk a mile.  At least GE fed me breakfast this morning before I dropped the bike back off at the rental center and headed back to the showcase for the Standards Geeks tweetup.  Quite a bit going on today.  Arien and I talk about some of his concerns on XCA and XCPD.  The day ended with an EHRA meeting with the ONC-ATCB's and Carol Bean from ONC (She's certifiably cool).  Not much to be said about the permanent certification program, but some good dialog on the ATCB program and as much as we know about stage 2.  NIST is no longer the only one writing test procedures (Mitre is apparently working on Quality and there are others).  ONC published what is needed to create test procedures in the Federal Register, so now I have to hunt down that document.  I mention that we need some consistent labeling for the ONC-ATCB program so that physicians know what to look for (a message also conveyed to Doug at the EHRA dinner), and Carol acknowledges the miss.  They'll be looking into that issue.  I also point out to the ATCB's that they need to be engaged in the S&I Framework process, just like everyone else.  QA does after all, need to sign off on specifications, right?  I raise that same point later to some folks at Delloite who are coordinating the S&I framework activities.  Then it's off to another tweetup with @dirkstanley @unclenate @2healthguru @MatthewBrowning @jeffbrandt.  I write this piece for Arien to address some of his concerns.

Thursday:  I am so ready to go home.  I get a few minute breather to post photos, and took some time to catch up with what's going on in Direct, Exchange and Connect portions of the ONC presence in the showcase.  I did a short interview with the HIMSS media folks on the showcase that may or may not get used (I need to work on that issue), then off to the airport.  What should have been an uneventful trip home gets challenging.  First, one of the multiply redundant components used for navagation goes down and we have to land at BWI to change planes.  Fortunately, a replacement plane is ready for us, and we just get off, line up, and start getting back on in just a few minutes.  Then, after I land in Boston and get into the cab, to get home, someone T-bones it.  Fortunately we were all moving at 5mph, and all damage is cosmetic, but it's another delay.

Friday:  I think I'll take the rest of the day off.  I've spent the last 11 days straight working, and the last 7 away from home.  I need a brain break.