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  Today in health IT conferences, who's winning, who's losing, and who caress. The question is how do you use these resources? My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health IT a channel day to keeping Health IT staff current. and engaged. Have you signed up for CliffNotes yet?

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Clips just an email we send out 24 hours after each show airs has bullet points, uh, a couple of videos and a summary of each show. Uh, great resource, great way to get the conversation started at your health system. Alright, here's today's story, himss, CEO. Thrilled with the numbers at HIMSS 21. So that's the title.

It's from Healthcare IT News. Which is gonna be a positive spin on this since it's owned by HIMSS Media. Here's some excerpts. HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf said the organization was thrilled with the numbers of participants in this year's HIMSS Global Health conference and exhibition, and raised the possibility of continuing with a joint digital and in-person approach going forward, talking to the vendors, the market suppliers, they're very happy.

Wolf said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon, although the final registration numbers weren't yet available, more than 18,000 had registered for the digital and in-person event by late July. The people here are really engaged at Wolf. By the way, that 18,000 number is well down from the 40 some odd thousand.

I remember going back in the. But it's still pretty significant number given what's going on in our world today. So I don't think HIMSS has lost its spot in the world. We're gonna get into that in the, so what, I'll go on a couple more excerpts. When it came to lessons learned from himss, we'll flag the importance of HIMSS Digital.

Which has made in-person content available to attendees remotely, as well as offering unique sessions online. I had someone from Italy that was watching the opening session and sending me notes. He said, I think the biggest lesson learned is that there's a combined appetite for us to continue, will said.

After the event, the team will evaluate the feedback about how the content came together and what trade-offs. Need to happen. We've been very pleased with the engagement on both sides. Wolf also raised the possibility of continuing with hybrid panels with some guests appearing via video chats and some in person rather than rearranging a panel if someone can't make it.

He said such a format could enable the inclusion of a wide variety of voices. We're going to go back and assess all those things. We're going to figure out a new normal. Uh, here's my so what on this? All conferences are tools in your tool belt. They are a great resource for networking, for learning, for exploring new solutions.

If you're a leader, this is a great way to groom and mentor young talent. It's a great way to capture the thinking of the industry and bring it back to your health system. Each conference has a theme, and that theme is usually designed around a target audience. I think it's important to know the theme of the conference and if the conference is worth your time and effort.

There are obviously industry conferences and there are topical conferences that cross industries. I like cross industry conferences for things like cybersecurity, digital transformation, marketing, and other topics. The industry conferences obviously provide . A deeper dive into the specifics of healthcare.

The big purveyors of healthcare conferences today are hims, chime Health, or HLTH, however you wanna say it. I will call it the Health Conference. And Becker's for large conference venues, HIMSS and Chime, require memberships. They're both fairly large for what they are. They used to be partnered and now they've gone their separate ways.

And CHIME has partnered with the health conference on a new event called Vive that's gonna be in Miami. This was really a shame because you could combine HIMSS and chime in the spring and limit your travel to one week of hyper networking. The new partnership with Health will present an interesting conference that's gonna be for sure.

I. If they do, they will be out of the office essentially for a two week, at a minimum, a 10 day time period. That is going to be very interesting decision that some people are gonna have to make. I like the networking and the education of HIMSS and I think it will bounce back. As I said earlier, I think it has a place in our industry and yes, it's at 18,000, but it's still.

A conference that you're probably going to put on your calendar every year, unless health figures out a way to knock it off, which is their intention, quite frankly. They want to take all those people and make it the Go-to event and they have the money and backing to make it happen. I like the mix of the people at the health event as well, the payers, providers, pharma investors, both VC and private equity.

I, I think that's an interesting group. It's really a different group than I typically see at the HIMSS event, so it's fun. To, uh, go to that event as well. Seeing my peers at a chime event was usually the highlight, but the breakouts have gotten better over time, and so that is an event that I liked to keep on my calendar.

And Becker's is rock Steady with good speakers and breakouts. I'm not a huge fan of Chicago, but that could be mostly because I'm a Cardinals fan. And we don't like anything outta Chicago. Maybe I'm taking that a bit too far actually. Chicago's a wonderful city, great restaurants and whatnot, and the Becker's conference is fantastic and, uh, highly recommend it.

Great speakers. I lo I love when he brings in the celebrities, Peyton Mannings, the, the presidents, the former campaign chairmans and those kinds of things. Those are interesting conversations as well. I, I have a personal belief. That I heard a while back, I don't know who to attribute it to, but I believe that inspiration happens in rows.

That is when you're lined up, seats facing a stage, and transformation really happens in circles. So I'm a fan of the smaller venues where I can interact directly with other CIOs. These kinds of events when our CIO would pop up throughout the year and these more intimate venues provided a better conversation that were oftentimes a catalyst for new partnerships.

So I really like those events and I always looked out for 'em. Regardless of your take on the whole event world, the question for you as individuals is how do you navigate these events? To the greatest personal gain, connecting with the right people, attending the right sessions. I think this requires a fair amount of pre-work.

I started planning for major events up to six months before they start. I ask people in passing if they're gonna go there, and I start to create a list of people that I want to see at the event. When the sessions and the speakers come out, I start planning which events are must see events, and which are I would like to see.

I know that when I get to the event, I will invariably . Be asked to sit down with someone and need to find some time in my schedule, and I don't wanna be overscheduled so that I can't find the time to schedule a face-to-face. Which I think communicates what I would prioritize at these events, which is the networking.

I cultivate relationships with key vendors and accept those invites to the smaller events to network. If I skip anything. Quite frankly, at this point, it's the late night events. I, I just can't do it anymore, but that's just me personally. Perhaps there's a lot of good networking and conversations that go on there and, and I think the vendors are counting on that.

To be honest with you, if you're a leader of people, I used to walk the floor with anyone from my health system that came to the event, so I would try to find out who was coming to the event and I would schedule some time to walk the floor with them to get a feel for what they were looking at, what they'd seen.

I would in introduce any of my . Direct team to my network. I would have them join me for coffee if I was meeting with another health leader. This has led to some great information sharing sessions between health systems. I would encourage my team to speak whenever possible and talk to the speakers.

After they were done presenting, if there was something that they said that was of interest, I would require anyone that attended the conference to come back and speak at a town hall session that we did. We did monthly town halls for our IT group, and I would require 'em to speak there when and, and really talk about what they took away from the conference.

We usually send about 10 people from a team of a about 700 to any one specific conference, which meant we needed to find a way to add value to the 690 people that didn't go to the conference, and that was just the method that I chose to use. I closed with this. Conferences are tools in your personal and professional tool bag.

Have a plan to maximize that investment. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to Podcast Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, you get the picture. We are everywhere.

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