2021 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition: That’s A Wrap!

Event, Interoperability
5 minute read

As we head into fall and look forward to appearing at several key industry shows like HLTH and MGMA, we close the doors on a very successful HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition (HIMSS21) in Las Vegas. With over 18,000 digital and in-person registered attendees and over 300 exhibitors, the HIMSS organization was thrilled with the turnout – and so were we. This was a unique and exciting HIMSS for us as we made our debut as Consensus Cloud Solutions, a soon to be standalone company spinning off from J2 Global, Inc. Attendees were able to visit our booth on the main exhibitor floor as well as our booth in the Interoperability Showcase where we unveiled plans for bringing seamless interoperability to providers and payers across the healthcare ecosystem. We thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to safely connect and engage with one another on the HIMSS21 campus.

 Sharing the Latest in Product Advancements and Real Use Case Demonstrations

Two new additions to our product suite were unveiled at HIMSS21: Consensus Clarity and Consensus Harmony, both designed to help organizations transform their digital journeys and deliver better patient care. Consensus Clarity is an AI and NLP automation solution that helps healthcare organizations move unstructured EMR data and clinical content to structured, analytics-ready data. Consensus Harmony was also demonstrated to attendees and is a universal API that can share structured data with other healthcare systems for better care coordination. The news of these additions was covered in great detail by Healthcare IT News in their article, “HIMSS21 Tech News: Cloud, Analytics and Interoperability Developments.” The article discusses the latest advancements in healthcare technology, showcased at HIMSS21, that will continue to push the industry closer toward achieving seamless interoperability between stakeholders.

Alongside the unveiling of these new product suite additions, attendees had the opportunity to visit the Interoperability Showcase and see our demonstration, AI Enabled Workflow Transformation, and ask questions of our product team. We’d like to extend a huge ‘thank you!” to our incredible partners for making this demonstration possible: EPIC, Kno2, MatrixCare, and RedHat. Having the ability to share how Consensus Cloud Solutions leverages our technology heritage to help providers move from simple digital documents to advanced healthcare standard HL7/FHIR for secure data transport as well as NLP/AI to convert unstructured to structured data is of the utmost importance. This is truly critical to helping users unveil information that is both meaningful and actionable.

Catch a Glimpse of our Education Panel Session with Coverage by Colin Hung

To add to our appearance in the Interoperability Showcase, Consensus Cloud Solutions hosted an education panel session at Caesars Forum Conference Center, Thought Leadership Theater. This panel session, Unleashing Unstructured Value Through Artificial Intelligence, was moderated by our very own Frank Toscano and featured outstanding panelists such as Karim Galil of Mendel, Therasa Bell of Kno2, and Michael Marchant of UC Davis. The panel presentation began with the results of a recent survey conducted by Consensus about the use of fax in today’s healthcare system. What seems to surprise many is how much fax machines are still used in healthcare today by administrators and in particular, our frontline workers who manage the challenging workflow of sending and receiving healthcare documents. This is why we must come to understand that we can achieve better interoperability when we meet every stakeholder along their interoperability journey and then advance their use of digital solutions starting with digital cloud faxing. From there, stakeholders can move to Direct Secure Messaging and ultimately to HL7 FHIR. In the end, the enemy of healthcare is not the fax, but the inability to easily automate processing for efficient clinical workflows in order to move us forward so that we can improve health outcomes.

The panel then dove deeper into the challenges healthcare is continuing to face in structuring and sharing its data, followed by thoughts on how AI can help close technology gaps and unlock the potential of important documents to improve the delivery of healthcare, quality reporting, research, and safety.

Healthcare IT Today’s Colin Hung was onsite, live-tweeting the education panel and keeping Twitter followers informed. In addition to live tweeting, Colin pieced together an article covering the full session: Is it Time to Lean into Fax for Provider-Provider Interoperability? To get the inside scoop on our education panel session and join the conversation, visit Colin’s Twitter page and be sure to read the full article on HealthcareITToday.com.

Sitting Down with Consensus Cloud Solutions COO, John Nebergall

Throughout the week at HIMSS, Consensus Cloud Solutions COO John Nebergall was able to sit down with well-known journalists across the healthcare industry and share about the future of the company. John explained the role Consensus Cloud Solutions will play in addressing interoperability challenges, how NLP and AI protocols will play into the interoperability narrative, and the importance of fax remaining as part of the equation. Take a closer look at the articles below to learn more.

For more information on Consensus Cloud Solutions’ presence at HIMSS21, please visit https://go.consensus.com/himss2021 and follow us on Twitter @ConsensusCare.

Author
Bevey Miner
EVP Healthcare Strategy & Policy
LinkedIn