This is year fifteen that I have been attending HIMSS and this show has really changed a lot..in many ways. Yes, it dates me a bit. I look at this as the same maturity in this show as the same with the American Heart Association that sprung to light in the 1980’s. However, what has changed is that this show is no longer dominated by the “city” type of booths of the likes of HIMSS, but a wide ranging plethora of companies in the technology landscape. Although there are still the mondo type of booths in the combination of this new technology landscape, they are becoming secondary.
A lot of this change is also driven the explosion in the wireless and mobility sectors and how these solutions will definitely improve the quality of care in all aspects. So what are some of areas of interest ( am staying away from this area of “meaningful use, but focusing on the area per my background that I think will need exploring?). The whole meaningful use area is it seems is the hot area to explore; but as said, the wireless mobility model is also front and center...in a major league way.
RFID/RFLS Pavilion
While a lot of RFLS systems have been around for over ten plus years, it seems that they have never really taken off on a total enterprise approach, i.e. enterprise location tracking. This could be for a variety of reasons, but I expect the 802.11x derivatives have either been too costly to implement on an enterprise basis, and/or did not give the level of accuracy on a room level basis. 802.11 for “location” tracking does have its limitations, so companies like www.awarepoint.com and www.centrak.com do seem to provide some very cost effective solutions that actually provide the enterprise work-flow improvement value. RFID was a technology trying to find a home. This when bar code scanning was and is the accepted use model. It works and is know. However, each respective EMR or medical device company simple feels that they should add their “own” bar code ID solution. Have they really looked at this from a nursing and clinical work flow perspective? The Neuron from www.capsuletech.com is the first attempt to really use RFID to improve the clinical process. The automation of association and disassociation of the patient ID, the medical device and the clinician (without all kinds of manual ID input), will go a long way to decrease errors, improve the care process, and let the clinician do what they do best, i.e. take care of patients.
WLAN (Wireless LAN)
This market has really matured over the past ten plus years into two main players in the healthcare space, www.cisco.com and www.arubanetworks.com However the up and comer it seems is www.ruckuswireless.com. Just like the little dog mascot that they have, they are the pit bull in this space. So one would ask why would I consider www.ruckuswireless.com instead of the market leader www.cisco.com? You just have to go back the recent article by Gartner where they really tell it like it is. Locking into one vendor on the surface sounds like a good idea, it is very, very expensive from an OPEX. Ruckus and they way they do “beamforming” just outshines every other WLAN technology in this space at ½ the amount of infrastructure. No hassle WIFI!
Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)
This is no longer a nice to have requirement for all the myriad smart phone applications running on the I-Pad, the I-Phone, and Android devices. Would like to see how many applications are now running on www.apple.com devices at HIMSS! While several infrastructure providers of this technology have promoted WLAN and WMTS on a DAS, they can say what they want, but this is failed technology and financial business model. Ask them how to support MIMO for 802.11n and LTE and compare and contrast a separate broadband model these services and a separate cost model for WLAN. Get it in writing that the WLAN provider will support all services and they the DAS provider will guarantee performance. Moving on from this legacy approach is the new kid on the block, www.solidtechusa.com. They are light years ahead of what it in the market, have the right marketing approach to separation of services. www.extenetsystems.com also has a unique twist to providing more of a services model to essentially host the entire system and provide the services back.
Alarm ManagementHas www.globestarsystems.com taken over where Emergin went away when gobbled up by Philips…yes.
Mobility Devices
I am going for my own edification assess all the different applications running on the I-Pad, I-Phone, Android, and oh yes the Blackberry. It is these applications that are going to drive more and more the need for LTE (yes Verizon), and change the game of deliverying healthcare in 2011 and beyond.
Mobility Applications
