It’s Thursday morning on the final day of HIMSS23, and although most exhibitors are still diligently manning their booths in the Windy City, the announcement fireworks have already gone off and it’s time to round up some of the biggest stories from the trade show.
The exhibit hall chatter had a familiar ring to it, touching on the same themes of healthcare consumerization and workforce burnout that were favorites at ViVE, but with a good amount of HIMSS’ signature interoperability seasoning sprinkled on top.
The list of generative AI launches somehow managed to be longer than the line at a McCormick Place Starbucks, but it seemed like most of the ~35,000 attendees were balancing the initial shock and awe with a realistic understanding of the tech’s current limitations in healthcare.
HIMSS23 major announcements, launches, and partnerships:
- Amazon rolled out several Alexa Smart Properties features designed to improve the patient and staff user experience at hospitals. The updates look like they make the lives of IT teams easier as they set up and maintain Alexa devices like the newly available Echo Show 15.
- Caregility announced a new portfolio of hybrid care solutions built on Caregility Cloud that’s designed to reduce tech investment risks for health systems by offering the flexibility to choose apps that are a good fit for their environment without creating more IT silos.
- eClinicalWorks introduced ChatGPT to its EHR and practice management solutions with the goal of making clinical workflows more efficient as it deepens its collaboration with Microsoft. Azure OpenAI Service will also be enhancing Scribe, eClinicalWorks’ AI dictation service.
- Epic and Microsoft are bringing generative AI powered by Azure OpenAI Service to the Epic EHR, which might take the cake as the biggest announcement of the show. The partnership delivers a “comprehensive array” of solutions, including SlicerDicer self-service reporting.
- Health Gorilla took the lid off its HG Accelerator Program that gives startups access to its solutions, portfolio of healthcare data APIs, and interop mentorship. The inaugural class already includes Oatmeal Health (AI cancer screening) and Long Health (patient onboarding).
- Innovaccer unveiled six new solutions that together look like the beginning of a new chapter in the company’s growth story. The Sara conversational AI leads the lineup that also includes Health Equity, Readmission Predict, Risk AI, Network Optimizer, and Health 1:1.
- Memora landed $30M to scale its SMS-based care communication platform that automates clinical responses to frequently asked questions, nudges patients with care prompts, and sends reminders via text, escalating only the most urgent concerns to care teams.
- Philips released its Future Health Index 2023 global report, which found that healthcare leaders are investing heavily in AI for both critical decision support and operational efficiency, and that these execs are leaning into outside partnerships to help provide the best possible care.
- RevSpring launched Engage IQ to coordinate patient interactions from pre-service to post-service to payment. The platform handles intake, clinical reminders, and billing to improve clinical and financial outcomes while solidifying patient loyalty.
- Rimidi’s clinical management platform is now integrated with MEDITECH, allowing clinicians to see remote patient-generated data and PROMs within disease-specific views in the patient chart alongside CDS support to drive next best steps.
- Salesforce customers can now use Einstein GPT to generate info using natural language prompts directly within their Salesforce CRM, with a new Slack integration also allowing care teams to summarize chat information and complete CRM tasks.
- symplr debuted four product suites as part of its Connected Enterprise initiative to help health systems address burnout and cost pressures. The new portfolio includes a Workforce Suite, Supply Chain Suite, Quality Suite, and Credentialing Suite.
- Withings completed its new range of smart scales with the introduction of the Body Smart scale that brings body comp, heart rate, visceral fat, metabolic age, and basal metabolic rate analysis to the entry-level tier of the lineup.
It’s now been three years since the pandemic stopped HIMSS20 in its tracks, but healthcare’s biggest IT conference is very much alive and well with an in-person energy that’s straight out of 2019. We hope that everyone had an awesome time if you made it to Chicago, and welcome all of our new readers that we met at the show. Stay tuned for a deeper dive into some of these announcements next week.
