HIMSS 2010: Aneesh Chopra, U.S. CTO, Talks about Health IT

Aneesh Chopra is talking so why wouldn’t I attend?  Need I say any more?  Even before he starts, you can tell he is an energetic speaker.

  • Innovations in Health IT would be good for the economy.
  • We are coming from “There’s a form for that.” to “There’s an app for that.”  Government reality doesn’t reflect public reality.
  • The US is 15th in Higher Education, 22nd in E-Government, and 40th on the Innovation Trends.  This was out of 40 countries.  The US had 2.7% growth.  Obama wants to return to number 1 by 2020. (Reasonable, but challenging)  Continue reading →

HIMSS 2010: Lessons Learned from Developing a Premier Global EHR

Here to hear Capt Michael Weiner talk about the Defense Health Information Management System (DHIMS) and the lessons that the DOD have learned.  I have a personal interest as I grew-up in the military health system and my parents and a large number of family members are in it now.  I haven’t been posting a lot of notes as I’ve just been absorbing, but this session should has lots of good information.

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HIMSS 2010: The Transformative Role of Health IT in the States

So I missed the keynote due to a conference call that was not to be missed.  I also realized that coffee is going to be a battle in lines.  Luckily I had heard those rumors and planned ahead and brought chocolate covered espresso beans.

To kick things off, I’m going to listen to the Governor of Vermont, Jim Douglas.  He is going to be talking about how HIE (Health Information Exchange) is important for the States in their interactions with the Federal Government.  Let’s see what I can learn.

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Exploring a Brave New World, HIMSS 2010

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image This is going to be a busy week for me.  I am off to HIMSS 2010 in Atlanta for a two primary reasons (and about a thousand secondary).  The first is to support my Healthcare colleagues from Washington Consulting at the conference.  The second, which will make the first all the more challenging, is to learn more about the vertical that is Healthcare IT.

Before I jump into it, a funny little joke.  When I was in a meeting and we were talking about the trip to HIMSS, someone mentioned HL7. Being one of many new terms to me, I didn’t ask them what it meant, just glanced at them with a curious look on my face.  They told me, and I kid you not, Look it up later. Just remember that there is no HL6 or 8.  Thanks for the help guys. ( I did learn what it was later and actually understood the “7” reference.)

Haven’t I Heard This Before?

So as I did research to get ready to hit the ground running, I saw a lot of challenges that the Healthcare industry is facing on the IT side.  I had heard most of it from a high level before in news reports and in Information Management/ECM case studies.  I had also picked some information up in planning for this year’s AIIM CMIS Demo.

When you strip out the names of the federal mandates and the acronyms that are common in the industry, I saw a lot words that I understood quite well:

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CMIS is Helping Application Separation, Today

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It is already happening, and I couldn’t be happier.  There are CMIS-base custom clients being developed and released that are taking some of the pain out of using ECM systems.  I’m not talking about open source clients, but commercial clients with dedicated teams and one goal, to make money.

I know that there is pain in the use of ECM systems, and not just because I use them.  I know this because of one simple metric; In my list my most successful ECM projects, the top of the list is dominated by systems that do not use the default user interface.  I’m not talking about customized clients.  I’m talking CUSTOM clients.

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Looking Beyond Box’s Market-Speak

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Box.net.  In case you missed it, I basically called their term for their solution, which I refuse to use again, “market speak” and hype while implying much worse.

A week later, Aaron Levie, the CEO and cofounder of Box.net, was interviewed on Fierce Content Management.  Here he espoused a solid vision for Box’s hosted version of Content Management, though that term was heavily featured, again.

During all this, a very surprising thing thing happened, Aaron contacted me and asked if we could setup a time to chat so that I might better understand their vision.  I accepted his offer.  Our scheduled meshed today and I thought I would share.

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Lessons in Product Marketing, ECM Style

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Last week I went to the Drug Information Association’s conference on Electronic Document Management (DIA EDM). I was there to get my feet wet again in the pharmaceutical industry.  I wanted to see what had changed and how things had evolved.

I learned a few things.  The first was that the drivers are basically the same in the industry as they were a few years back.  I’m still digesting the material on the conference, and there should be more on what I learned later.  The most important thing that I learned wasn’t about Clinical Research Organizations or any other of the latest trends in managing electronic submissions.

It was in marketing.

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Is 2010 the Year of CMIS?

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imageYesterday, Fierce Content Management published an article that I wrote entitled The Future of CMIS.  I discussed what I see as a very busy, and important, year for CMIS.  It is a good article, at least on the Scale of Pie, and I am not going to be regurgitating it here for you.

Instead, I feel the need to clarify an inconsistency.  In the article I stated [bold added]:

The past year was a good year for the proposed Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. The specification was released for public review and efforts began to build an Open Source implementation of CMIS,  Apache Chemistry. The next year promises to be even bigger…

I even proclaim that The future is now.  That is all well and good, but there is one thing hanging over that statement.  I predicted in my mandatory 2010 predictions post that:

2010 Will Not be the Year of CMIS

These statements appear to contradict each other.  Now I could just say that my thinking has evolved and excuse myself that way, but I’m not.  I’m sticking with both statements.

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EMC Admits it Needs Help, Partners with FatWire

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If you haven’t been paying attention, EMC announced a strategic partnership with FatWire today.  I couldn’t be much more pleased.  I’ve been pretty clear that I don’t feel that EMC’s Documentum Web Publisher has the chops to compete in the market and that as long as its release cycle was tied to the Content Server, it never would.

That is no longer a problem.  What does this mean for EMC and FatWire?

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"Cloud Content Management" Hype

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headdesk Every now and then, I read a post/article/tweet that makes me slam my head against the nearest hard surface.  The culprit this time was an article titled Cloud Content Management to Challenge ECM?

I saw the title and was intrigued.  I then read it and realized that the author had started falling for some market speak.  I quickly determined that the fault was not completely with the author.  Yes, they had fallen under the spell of some marketing and should have been strong enough to resist.  The real villian here? Box.

Remove the Cloud

Okay, lets think this through, logically.  First, let’s look at Box’s definition of Cloud Content Management.  When you look at it, you see them describing a SaaS offering.  More importantly, you are seeing them talk about the advantages of hosting it on the internet as opposed to your server room.

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