It was already Thursday morning and I had no blog topic in mind for this week. By Thursday night I had several. So, what happened in between?

I attended the New England HIMSS Chapter’s Annual Spring Conference – something I’d planned to do for a while. On my way there, I figured something that day would light a fire and I’d have a topic to talk about. Instead, there was a different kind of fire.

One of the chapter board members called me in the car and said she had heard I was on my way to the conference. I thought to myself, I’m stuck in traffic and may get there after the opening keynote starts, but did I have to admit that to her? No, that was just my guilt about leaving the house 15 minutes later than I should have. She was calling for a “small favor, no actually a big favor” as she said.

Turns out one of the afternoon speakers had gotten stuck in New York with flight cancellations and couldn’t make it. So, a panel with 3 chapter members was being hastily put together – would I be willing to participate? Of course I would. I said yes without knowing what we’d talk about or who else was being asked to be on the panel.

Two other panelists were being enlisted in that same rush of phone calls and conversations. Arthur Harvey, chapter board member and CIO at Boston Medical Center, had already arrived at the venue. He was of course very sympathetic to the dilemma and ready to help. Arthur and I were on the CIO panel together at the 2017 spring conference. He was already starting to percolate on a relevant topic we could address. Dirk Stanley, CMIO at UConn Health, was on his way to the conference from Connecticut and got a call like mine. I only knew Dirk from social media, so I was looking forward to meeting him in person.

When I arrived at the conference and was greeted warmly by board members who were pulling this backup plan together, I asked which speaker had to cancel and what was their topic. Answer: Blockchain. I laughed and said, well we’re not doing a panel on blockchain. Everyone agreed. I was still in.

During the morning break we agreed that “innovation” would be our topic. Our focus and moderator questions came to life over lunch in a lively prep discussion about why organizations need to innovate, the challenges they face, how to operationalize, different models, and how to measure success. Marie Maloney, our moderator and board member, wrote down the general questions we agreed to address. She was more than grateful to moderate the panel having been up in the middle of the night talking to the speaker who had to cancel. We were good to go for a mid-afternoon panel.

The keynotes for the day were excellent. Hal Wolf, President and CEO of HIMSS, gave the opening keynote and outlined key challenges facing the healthcare industry. Dales Sanders, President of Technology for Health Catalyst, spoke after lunch on “Raising the Digital Quotient of Healthcare”. And Judy Murphy, Chief Nursing Officer for IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences, gave the closing keynote on “Beyond the EHR: From Transformation to Reinvention.

The topics I was inspired to write about by the end of the conference included population health, patient engagement, digital health, customer service in healthcare, impact of social media, innovation, and analytics. But there wasn’t time before my Friday AM publishing schedule to do any of them justice.

I will admit though with some humility that Arthur, Dirk and I along with the moderator skills of Marie did justice to the topic of innovation. We got a lot of good feedback on the panel from conference attendees. The best comment was from someone as I pulled out of the parking lot – “Great panel, it should have been on the agenda to begin with.” I’ll take that as a positive!

Kudos to the New England HIMSS Chapter Board and everyone involved in making this such a content rich day!

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