HIMSS 2018 exhibitors push cybersecurity products heavily

Over the past month, HIMSS 2018 exhibitors have proposed nearly 150 story ideas to me, so I decided to informally track the topics associated with these product pitches.

Although it didn’t surprise me that healthcare cybersecurity made up about 23% of the story ideas I got suggested, buzzwords like population health and value-based care were hardly on the lips of sellers. I found that fact interesting, because by comparison, those trends will surely remain on the minds of tens of thousands of conference attendees in Las Vegas.

The quandary probably speaks more to the business challenges faced by HIMSS 2018 exhibitors.  Few, if any, of them truly have a value-based care application, for example. It’s more likely they sell patient data analytics software or patient outcome tracking that can assist with value-based efforts. That subtle difference may be put health IT purchasing teams in a tough spot if they’re seeking software help to meet value-based care goals.

Traditional products in healthcare, such as EHR software and communications and networking platforms, persist as high priorities for vendors, based on my numbers.

Newer tech, including artificial intelligence and blockchain, are fairly prominent among HIMSS 2018 exhibitors, although I suspect AI will be a hugely discussed topic — perhaps No. 1 — among healthcare IT professionals and CIOs at the conference.

One of my missions at HIMSS is to learn more about what the big enterprise tech players are doing in healthcare these days, so those are the vendors I’m heading to see. How about you? Let me know in the comments section below. And good luck at HIMSS.