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And current health. Check them out at this week, health.com/today. Alright, so got back late last night from the health conference out in Las Vegas and it was fun and I apologize for not doing a show yesterday. Hopefully you took the time to go over to our, this week Health Community Channel. Took a look at the town hall.

That's where you can catch all the interviews that we've been doing at the various conferences. We did 29 interviews at the Chime conference. And then we followed that up by doing an additional, I don't know, I think about 12 interviews in action at the health conference and then, uh, a new series that we're going to introduce to you.

We actually went from booth to booth, did short five minute clips at each booth, and we're gonna stitch 'em together and try to give you the sense of walking the floor. Actually, we haven't named it yet. Maybe that, maybe that's what it is. Walking the floor. We'll see. Um, you know, so what did I learn at the health conference?

Well, one of the things I posted on LinkedIn is the bifurcation of marketing and the health conference is literally about health, and the other conferences are about healthcare himss. Is kind of trying to be a mix, but they're really about healthcare and the CHIME events are really about healthcare as well, except you have the Vive event, which is trying to combine the two.

And I hope they're successful because I, I. Really don't see the distinction between health and healthcare. So hope, hope they're able to bring those two things together at that event. Um, either way it's, uh, it's interesting. So this, this conference was really about health and a lot of the organizations are focused in on delivering care outside of the four walls of the health system.

And a lot of the organizations that were there, not all of them. Mind you, but a lot of 'em that were there are really focused in on payers as their clients, and they're focused in on employers as their, um, as their primary targets for clients. It's interesting, the direct to consumer seems to have waned significantly in this space.

I, for obvious reasons, I, I think it's been very difficult for organizations to find out how to get paid and how to be sustainable in a direct to consumer world because that's not how our health systems are made up. So spend a lot of time. Really working the floor, talking to various, uh, organizations that were there.

I didn't sit in on enough of the, I didn't sit in on enough of the main stage events or the panel discussions. I would've loved to, to be honest with you. They had a pretty good slate of panel discussions, heavy emphasis on health equity. There was a heavy emphasis on health equity and on health topics, as you would imagine.

And there was also just some fun stuff. And anytime you put Jonathan Bush on a stage, you're gonna have some fun. And here's some great stories. He's just one of the more entertaining presenters in our industry. And as with any conference, there was a fair number of announcements that were made. Uh, the one that I really focused in on, 'cause I thought it was very fascinating because this, this was a problem I was trying to solve as ACIO.

The thing that's really interesting about it is it's really impressive. I went by the Google booth and took a look at it both in its form that is integrated with Meditech Expanse and also took a look at it. From the, just the Google interface standpoint. Really powerful. It's amazing. It searches the entire thing, puts relevance on the various documents, can be in structured unstructured data.

I. And it presents it in a way that's fairly intuitive. Uh, it, it really is a powerful viewer into the medical record and with integration into Meditech. I think that is a powerful new capability to keep an eye on. And just very interesting. It was fun to see some people that have made progress with their solutions and where they're going.

Sat down with Charlie Lowed, who's been on the show. He's with actual A-X-U-A-L-L, I believe is the, is how they say the name. And they've really progressed that company and, and have a fair number of, uh, clients now and love to see the, uh, progress of those companies. I talked to a bunch of the people who are providing capital to these companies, VC and uh, private equity and others.

And you know, one of the things that we're hearing and we have been hearing for quite some time is that there is an emphasis. On runway on making sure that you're gonna make it through this, what we're gonna call a slow time in our economy. Um, and there's been a pivot away from the growth at all cost strategy to one of making an operating income so that the companies will have a longer runway.

So, um, you know, from my perspective, that's good to see. The other thing we're seeing is a lot more focus from these companies. If there was a time where you'd walk into a booth and you'd hear the, yeah, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. But they have very powerful platforms. They're bringing in a lot of information.

They would experiment in a lot of different areas because they could, because they had those kinds of powerful tools underneath them. But more and more, what you're hearing is a focused . Direction from the founders and from the people in the booth. This is what we do. This is what we do well, this is what we're doing for healthcare.

This is what we're doing for health systems. This is who we're partnered with. The message is getting clearer, and I think that is what happens in a down economy and the benefit of being in a down economy is that you get a lot more focus from these companies. The noise starts to go away. There's a general belief that we will see a culling of the herd.

I don't know if that's a good, good way of saying that, but essentially we're gonna see some of these startups drop off. Some of 'em, not because their technology's bad or business models are bad, it could just be a timing thing. But some of 'em, because they weren't unable to get focused, there's timing, there's lack of money, there's, uh, a lot of different things that could lead to, uh, them going away.

But there's a general belief that we will see some of them drop off. Not, not only some of them. A fair number of them sort of drop off. So as always, uh, buyer beware, this is a very challenging market for startups and so if you're doing business with startups, make sure that they have a firm financial foundation.

I'm trying to think what else I heard. I think one of the things is I did talk to a couple of health system leaders and, and that's one of the questions I'm gonna get from you, the listeners. You know, how many health systems were actually represented? There was five, I think five or 600 . Of the total of 10,000 people who were at the conference actually represented health systems.

Now, before you go too far, it didn't necessarily represent CIOs or tech buyers. It was all over the board. You had a lot of innovation people, investment people from health systems and other types who were invited to speak and other . Types of arrangements for them to be there. So I'm not sure the buyers were there.

Maybe a handful of buyers were there. Investors were there from health systems for sure. And then the speakers ranged from CMOs to others. Who were representing some of the partners and partnerships that they had done in the past. But I did have a handful of conversations with people. Um, you know, one of the more interesting ones will probably lead to another show later on.

I don't know, I'll, I'll try to think of when I throw this one in. Uh, but this whole idea of health systems being investors and really being in the VC game, I think is a. Dying or dead strategy. And I say that now that we have some experience and we're looking back and we're seeing the investments that health systems have made and the returns on those investments, and we're not good investors, as I think the net of it.

And I think it's a lot more challenging. I think it's, it's a different skillset than the one we've had before, and we're seeing a transition to more investing in . technologies and companies that have a direct impact on our delivery of healthcare in our community. So I will go into more detail on that a little later, but it's interesting.

It feels like that experiment. Has not gone all that well for the companies that did it. And the companies that did it in a big way. Um, they were trying to follow the players that have been successful at it. UPMC has been successful at it. Ascension Ventures has been successful at it, but others have not quite been able to get it off the ground, so we'll talk a little bit about that in a future episode.

But anyway, health throws a great conference. As I said earlier, they do a really good job of the event itself. I mean, there's food . All throughout the day, everywhere there was, you weren't nickeled and dimmed by having to go somewhere and, you know, drop some more money and that kind of stuff. They just do a good job.

There was music, there was, uh, energy. One of the things I really liked was that the main stage was connected to the floor. I. The, the vendor floor, whatever they call it. And that really had an interesting energy to it. They also had stages throughout stages at each one of the corners, which were, um, a lot smaller than the main stage, but were really good venues for breakouts and that kind of stuff.

So they . Have really thought through the conference, um, setup well and just do a great job of it. And as always, you know, the Venetian is a great venue to have an event at. It was not . All that complicated to get around 10,000 people is a lot easier to manage than say, some of the other conferences that we've gone to in the past where it's, you know, 30 or 40,000.

I would say 10 thousand's, a great number, to be honest with you. I saw just about everybody I wanted to see at the, at the conference and had the conversations I wanted to have, but there was enough people that there was energy and things going on. But it was small enough that I was able to find the people I wanted to talk to.

When you get to 40,000, there's a whole host of people that you just never run into. Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the conference, what I learned from the conference, and you'll probably be hearing more because it was a late night, early morning, and I'll remember some things and share them in future episodes.

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