InterSystems just held Global Summit, our annual conference and celebration. The weather was gorgeous and the parties were terrific. Better than all of that were the conversations and the information exchange. With the gargantuan HIMSS15 expo and its sensory overload looming on the horizon, it was especially nice to interact with healthcare colleagues from around the world on a human scale.
The Global Summit is actually a mix of events reflecting the nature and breadth of InterSystems business. After kicking off with presentations by CEO Terry Ragon and several other executives, there are user meetings, technical training classes, business coaching sessions, and an issue-oriented healthcare leadership event. Having not yet successfully cloned myself, I was only able to attend the first day of the high-energy HealthShare User Group followed by the Healthcare Leadership Conference. I only wish more events were as productive!
We began the Healthcare Leadership Conference with a keynote by international patient engagement advocate e-Patient Dave. This was followed by case studies from InterSystems’ customers about their work in patient engagement, care coordination across communities, clinical research, and care management. There was cordial debate, animated idea exchange, some great innovation brainstorming, and a lot of follow up conversation over meals. We had participants from seven nations and much of the U.S. There were regional health information organizations (RHIOs), large and small providers, specialty caregivers, application developers, pharmaceutical researchers, and industry pundits.
If I were going to try to create a word cloud of the event, it would include things like:
Patient Engagement | DSRIP | Genomics | Continuity of Care| Measurement | Care Management | Big Data | Community | ROI | Information Exchange | Population Health | Transformation | Clinical Research | Analytics | Partnership | Value-based Payment
When I think about it further, that list is not only very incomplete, but also entirely reflective of the issues we all grapple with every day in healthcare. Some are more U.S.-focused, but most of the same issues matter, wherever we deliver, or receive, care. Which is, of course, the whole reason we get together every year – so we can learn from one another. We learn from our customers. Our customers learn from each other.
The vision for HealthShare is to transform care through sharing health information. I guess we could say that is also the vision for Global Summit!
