HIMSS Highlights With Sunny Tara, CEO Of CareCognitics

Our founder, Sunny Tara, and some of the CareCognitics team attended HIMSS2019 from February 11-15 in Orlando, FL. It was our mission to speak to physicians about transforming patient experience and loyalty and learn more about what pain points physician practices care about. Sunny went with the mission of learning and connecting. Here are some of the presentations he thought were exemplary for being on the vanguard of Health IT, and espousing optimism and creativity for the future of the industry:

1)   Dr. Richard Milani, from Ochsner, did a session on Monday, February 11, at the HiMSS physicians executive symposium, which was excellent. The session was about the epidemic of chronic disease; it presented simple, practical ways to engage patients, and shared outcomes that were remarkable. I applaud the work Dr. Milani is doing and hope he becomes an inspiration to his fellow physicians.

2)   The opening keynote on Tuesday, February 12, was a breath of fresh air: it allowed attendees to witness two democratic and two republican healthcare bureaucrats jointly complement the work done by the previous administration and talk about how it can be used as a stepping stone to build upon to make healthcare better. They discussed some of the positive new regulations passed by the Center for Medicaid Services to advance interoperability and give patients access to health data via my health data initiative.

3)  The SOMOS presentation on February 12, by Dr. Ramon Tallaj and Tongue Yaman, MPH. It was very impressive to see how they integrated 300+ practices on different electronic health records within their first year of operation. In doing so, they were able to reduce avoidable hospital admissions by 25%, which resulted in a $33 million distribution to the physician network after the first DSRIP incentive payment. Financial rewards and better records working are great to see in action.

4)   Exhibition booths. Some of the best presentations are found on the exhibition floor. As always, there were very impressive vendor booths–but two that stood out for me were:

  • A) The Israel booth at the HiMSS exhibition–I was very impressed with the innovative digital solutions coming out of Israel, which are very promising; I look forward to working with a few of the companies in the near future.
  • B) The Intermountain booth– It stood out by being very different from the rest, which forced you to have the conversation, which I thought was very innovative. It had an open floor design with projections reminiscent of Utah Nature. While the bear was slightly distracting, he was also a sort of proud mascot of HIMSS.

5)   The HiMSS keynote address, in which Cris Ross, CIO of Mayo Clinic, shared his touching and very inspiring personal story.  It put all of the work we do as members of the healthcare IT industry in perspective, and at the same time made us all reflect on the work we have ahead to improve the patient care & experience. “Are we seeking to transform or are we merely coping?” This is a question we ask ourselves at Carecognitics. Learning at a conference like HIMSS is part of this learning process.

Industry events can inspire learning and highlight success. It was an honor to learn from physician leaders and drive our mission of better patient loyalty through personalized technology. We can do so much more and look forward to continuing our mission of learning and growing.

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