It has taken me a while to get my thoughts together to reflect on the annual convention. There were so many influential and powerful organizations and staff in attendance and I felt I was fortunate to find some time to speak with as many as I could squeeze in to my schedule. My reason for attending was to assist in growing the health care vertical market for TabletKiosk for their product line of Tablet PCs, which lend themselves perfectly for the health care market. I knew there were going to be some real influential and informative sessions taking place, especially when the first HIMMS shuttle bus I saw had a picture of John Halamka painted on on the side, the CIO from Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston, a true leader in healthcare IT technology.
The interest in mobile hardware this year was truly accelerated from what it has been in the past. When traveling around and speaking with various companies, there was not hardly one who was not interested in the Sahara Tablet I had in my hands. This started from the plane ride to the convention all the way to the airport for my return! Tablet fever was alive and well at HIMMS this year!
For those who are not aware of the the size of the HIMMS convention, there were around 900 booths on the floor, with a trolley service you could catch to get from one end to the other. Being I am an avid Tablet user myself, I found that with so many participants that I needed to do my homework ahead of time, to make sure I was able to make contact with the potential partners I wanted to meet with either for a first meeting or in follow up with phone conversations I had before hand. In order to accomplish this feet, I decided to create my own "One Note Business Intelligence files" to organize myself. It took me a couple days to put the files together, but when completed I had a HIMMMS notebook of all the companies and potential clients I felt I needed to contact.
I can't tell you what a life saver this was to have my information with me on the tablet, portable and ready for me to easily add some handwritten notes during my conversations. As I would enter the booth and begin a discussion, I simply pulled up my file and began to take notes. I also had a couple nice comments from the folks I met with as I had everything together and had done my homework as far as having the basic information on what each company did and how Tablet PCs could fit or help their healthcare missions. In short, everyone who attends spends not only a substantial amount of money, but a good amount of time to prepare for this event, so I felt it was only good courtesy and manners to be apprised myself of how and where they conducted business and discuss mobility solutions as it related to their business, thus cutting down some of the learning processes from both sides. I used the pages to scribble and write all of my notes.
Nick Harrington from EMR Update was helpful in capturing and showing a video in the TabletKiosk booth, and in return I put a tablet in his hands to use for his notes too! I have included the video in a prior post and many thanks for the coverage. Arinc Healthcare had already discovered the Sahara Tablet and had 2 of them on display in their booth. I found I was so busy that I did not have time for pictures, so my apologies there.
I can't begin to tell you how effective using the Tablet was for attending the convention. In my opinion if I am to convince others of the true value of mobility and having your information at hand for use at any time, I have to do the same. Tablets do play a very important role in healthcare, but are not limited to only physicians and nurses, anyone can benefit from information mobility! I also have all my notes for future meetings and follow up.
From my experience this year at HIMMS, one thing I can truly recommend for anyone attending any type of convention, "get a tablet"....ditch the paper....and keep everything in one place. It truly made a world of difference for me and something this simple could easily work for anyone. BD
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