HIMSS 2021: Day 1 - Live From the NL to Las Vegas

Well it's hard to choose where to emphasize with so many golden nuggets in the program.

But let's start with President and CEO of HIMSS Hal Wolf: his message that we HAVE to go to the FORE-front of the ‘problem’ to me stood out. We have to see how technology CAN help with health and wellbeing as opposed to focusing ONLY on the healthCARE frontier.

We CAN improve THIS with the help of the current opportunity that digital health -globally- offers us now.

However, we HAVE to be mindful of the challenges as was perfectly discussed in the Panel about Virtual Care with patients, providers, policymakers, and more.

Internet access is for instance crucial to all of this: for the daily operation (for redundancy) and for health-equity.

The question is how governments, globally, can create THE RIGHT on access to broadband in this ever-growing digital world. Maybe there is even a role here for the Elon Musks and alike, with their internet initiatives?

The pandemic stressed out HC systems, as we all know. Digital health was often the ONLY way. I’ve recently said in an interview in the National newspaper: we’ve been Pregnant for digital health for years, and now during this pandemic, It came to life through an acute C-section.

So what’s next? We’re at this NEW plateau, no way near a tipping point yet as I hear some say, we’ll have to accommodate from here and then to the next plateau.

Virtual care is so much more than video consults alone, it is remote monitoring, informed consent, transparency are increasingly now in the mix.

So now there is this growing CTA by patients: the genie is out of the bottle THEY are there already, it’s US healthcare professionals that have to adapt. Do we incorporate this in our educational systems, at Med-school and nursing schools?

I think we have to approach it globally. The different approaches of the US en Europa (like NL, Belgium Germany Spain) could teach us a ton.

The US could look more abroad at how other countries are doing, I’m very happy HIMSS is doing so more and more and I’m happy to be one of the collaborators in this journey with them.

The new platform Accelerate will turn out to be crucial for that, learn from and with your peers globally. In digital health in the end there will be no boundaries and borders anymore.

Seen a great post by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn about how the OECD rates different countries' health systems. Yes, we Dutchies have been in the top 3 for many years, but to my point earlier: lets-learn-together!

Be sure to follow me on Accelerate AND AND fill out your profile so we know who you are building this global health community.

Looking very much forward to todays’ sessions like the importance of visualization of data, now during this pandemic (I've never seen so many graphs together ;-)

How did organizations like the NYT inform their readers that are overwhelmed with data? And of course, the many presentations about lessons learned already around this pandemic like the one today at 5 pm with the WHO, Clalit from Israel, Secretary of Defense, and many more.

But I’m also thrilled to see Adrienne Boissy of the Cleveland Clinic on a topic that’s been very near to my heart and mind already for years in my innovation center: empathy and compassion. I’m sure you and Chris will find those very interesting as well Rachel.

The last one to look for -right before that one- is ‘When innovation gets personal’. With the mother of Charity Tillman-Dick an opera singer faced many hurdles and overcame all… but one.

I had the opportunity to meet here at Exponential Medicine of my big friend Dr. Daniel Kraft. I think it touches on why all of us are in healthcare in the first place. She would have loved to join us here at HIMSS.

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to hearing more about provider burnout, designing equitable innovations, and the sessions about space health, as if we can fix it there we can fix it anywhere right?