Sorry I Missed HIMSS...Not...

I have never made it to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems conference, better known as HIMSS, and I suspect I never will.  My friend Mike Cannavo, the One and Only PACSMan, did attend this year, primarily because it was in his backyard, I suppose, and renders this report on his illustrious blog.

Based on Mike's review and others like it (well, there aren't any others quite like it but...), it seems that HIMSS has strayed mainly into the realms of informatics, numbers, demographics, and the like, and away from PACS and the picture-based information we radiologists know and love.  Heck, even SiiM is getting too esoteric for the likes of me.

There were some interesting sights at HIMSS, however, according to Mike:

Best Marketing- without a doubt XLR8r. They had it together.
Worst Marketing- No names will be used to protect the guilty, but it deals with infection control and I’ll leave it at that. I wish I could have taken a picture but guys tend to frown on you when you bring a camera in the men’s room so you’ll have to take my word on this one. I’m standing there getting rid of the morning's coffee and look down and there, written on the urinal screen, is the message “Your keyboard is 4 times dirtier that this” (or something like that). I’m like- “Is NOTHING sacred any more?” Now I’ve been in sports bars and such where they had the newspaper sports section posted above the urinal so you can look at the headlines while you take a leak but the urinal screen? And I really didn’t want to argue with the guys but in the absence of a disease condition urine is basically sterile and is greater than 95% water, with the remaining constituents, in order of decreasing concentration urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L, sodium 1.17 g/L, potassium 0.750 g/L, creatinine 0.670 g/L and other dissolved ions, inorganic and organic compounds so what’s so dirty about a little pee. If it was good enough for Gandhi it’s good enough for me…. But alas I digress lest someone say I’m full of piss and vinegar.

Maybe next year. Or maybe not. Thanks for the info, Mike!!