The AMDIS Connection | Won't You Join Us?

One of the most exciting opportunities at this year's HIMSS Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas, Feb. 20-24, is the Physician IT Symposium. Since 2003, AMDIS and HIMSS have jointly planned this program, and many on the planning committee for this component of HIMSS12 are physicians who also serve on the AMDIS board of directors. You'll find that there are tracks and sessions applicable to your CMIO career, no matter your setting or experience level.

The focus is The Health IT Balancing Act: Managing the CMIO Workload, to which I'm sure many of you can relate. CMIOs have numerous responsibilities and perhaps for you those responsibilities are only increasing. Just when you thought that computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and EHRs were enough to keep you busy, many CMIOs now face responsibilities regarding accountable care, ICD-10 and patient portals. Those competing priorities can make it difficult to master a method for keeping all of those balls in the air at any one time. Balance is critical and the symposium will focus specifically on how to manage that balance.

Many of you have come to learn firsthand by now that implementing various technologies, whether CPOE, EHRs or another electronic tool, is merely the first step. Many CMIOs have evolved from the role of implementer to someone tasked with optimizing IT systems via clinical decision support (CDS) and other methods. To that end, the Physician IT Symposium Opening Keynote, The Evolution from Transaction-Oriented to Intelligence-Oriented EHRs, will be presented by John P. Glaser, PhD, CEO of the health services business unit at Siemens Healthcare. The very nature of EHRs is shifting and CMIOs are in the vital role of guiding that change to produce better efficiency and improved patient outcomes by leveraging EHRs, CDS and workflow management.

The opening keynote will be followed by a panel discussion on Understanding CDS Interventions: Using Clinical Informatics to Drive Quality. Many of the participants have been quoted in the pages of CMIO about their CDS experiences—both the rewards and the challenges. Many impressive case studies have come out of CDS efforts.

When it comes to the future for CMIOs and health IT, several sessions will address many of the concerns you might be facing about your career. How can you shift from an implementation role to one of optimization? How will that shift play out in coming years? What developments might we expect to see in such areas as telemedicine and the use of mobile devices?

Of course, this is only the Physician IT Symposium portion of HIMSS12. The rest of the annual meeting presents a wide range of topics that are pertinent and timely for CMIOs. From accountable care to meaningful use to health information exchange and ICD-10, there surely is something for everyone. I look forward to seeing colleagues and peers as well as exploring the latest developments and advances on display in the exhibit hall, and AMDIS members, please join the AMDIS Roundtable, Wednesday, 10:00am-12pm, in the Bellini Ballroom.

I hope to see you there and trust that all attendees will have a valuable, informative experience at HIMSS12.

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