Well another HIMSS in 2010! This not to sound less than exciting but after thirteen years; this years event is major, as it seems the bent is toward technology transforming the patient experience versus somewhat a "showbiz" events of the past. That is all very good as we have now real technology innovations present, that will solve the day to day clinical and business issues while saving costs throughout the patient experience. This venue is seemed to be quite different without the mega booths of Cerner and Siemens, but then again you had General Electric, Philips, EPIC, however what I enjoyed was the proliferation of smaller and smaller companies bringing new technologies to the forefront. This will drive technology innovations to save costs and improve care. Further the focus of what was evident was on not so much on the EMR vendors, but those "mobility and infrastructure companies" that can drive real business value. CIsco Systems www.cisco.com really had a great presence. They have rapidly evolved into the application space and are driving real business value converging data, voice, and video. This show was the unveiling of their Health Presence platform. Had to go to their booth on the second day, as simply I could not wedge myself in the first day. With the I-Phone making it's presence, there was a profound number of new companies displaying for the first or second time for example www.airstriptechnologies.com. However to support all the the bandwidth of these new applications you must have a reliable WLAN for either VoIP (The I-Phone supports this), or if on the case of the ATT network, reliable in-building coverage. So all the major WLAN players were there and also new ones, www.cisco.com www.arubanetworks.com, www.merunetworks.com, www.ruckuswireless.comand a variety of DAS (Distributed Antenna System) companies. These DAS companies include the ones that some traditionally know like MA and IW, but new entrants that driving new and exciting ways of providing in-building converage. These include SOLiD www.solidtechusa.com and Extenet Systems. As we move the majority of what we do to the new healthcare mobility continuum, those companies that are forward thinking in providing the infrastructure and mobility devices to support those applications will be the winners. I also failed to mention www.capsuletech.com. With the second supported release of Neuron they for the first time introduced positive patient association and disassocitation. This is technically done by using the Thing Magic reader and Alien RFID tags. This really improves upon the workflow for the clinician by not forcing them to always have to use a bar code scanner at the point of care. However, I would say bar code scanning has come a long way from my days at Symbol Technologies (now Motorola). Laser scan engines have been displaced by CCD imagers that can de-code all symbologies to include 1D, 2D, and now 3D. (2D and 3D were used on the HIMSS badges).