In January, I went to my first Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was as massive as I heard, full of large screen TVs, many curved screens, drones, health trackers, etc. I spent most of the time at the Digital Health Summit – a well organized event including patient panels, fitness health device startups, wellness programs, and a demonstration of a exoskeleton. Got to catch up with some friends including Hugo Campos.

At the end of February, I  experienced my first HIMSS conference as staff rather than member. A series of full days in Orlando, most of the time spent managing the new Connected Patient Learning Gallery which was a big success with speakers including Lygeia Ricciardi and Regina Holliday both painting and speaking. Great to spend time with other HIMSS staff and understand what it takes to pull of a successful conference of 36,000 participants.

One of the advantages of working in the Global Center for Health Innovation in Cleveland is that it is attached to the Cleveland Convention Center. As a result, I had the opportunity to attend the Cleveland Clinic Patient Experience Summit in May, the Case Management Society of America in June and the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit in October.

In June, I had the opportunity to speak at the Northern Ohio HIMSS conference on the Value of Patient Engagement. There were several other chapter meetings, chapter leader institute, meaningful use meeting and the Nursing Informatics Institute, all well delivered HIMSS events.

In November, I had a great opportunity to present at the D-Data Exchange and attend the Diabetes Mine Innovation Summit. Although I had been to other events like MedicineX and Health 2.0 which advocate for patients and include patients throughout their programs, Diabetes Mine is a close-knit and strong advocacy group of Type 1 diabetics who know their technology and know policy to make their lives better. See my blog post about this on the Maker Culture in Healthcare.

In December, I returned to the HIMSS mHealth Summit in DC. Great presentations on cutting edge technology with an emphasis on what new ideas work and how they can impact patient outcomes. There was also talk about co-development of new apps and technology with patients. I also enjoyed the international flavor of the conference, especially the African representatives discussing ways to use mHealth to address the Ebola crisis.

I had book chapters published including:

• a chapter on social media
• A revision of my chapter on eResearch in the Health Informatics textbook
• A chapter on Computing and Information in a book on Wireless Health

Also, I had 3 publications, two journal articles as coauthor with the Chronic Kidney Disease Registry at Cleveland Clinic.

It was also an active year for blogging:

• Most of my blogging activity moved to the HIMSS blog
• In October, I began LinkedIn long posts on “This Week in Patient Engagement” which has been successful.

I continue to teach a online course on Clinical Analytics for Kent State University. Great students and a great opportunity. Looking forward to developing a second level course on analytics in 2015.

In 2015, there will be few posts here but more at HIMSS and LinkedIn. Please follow me there.

My first trip mixed pleasure and work. Being in Salt Lake City, I agreed to speak to the Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science on some of my work at the Cleveland Clinic and the Cleveland Clinical and Translational Science Consortium. Bernie LaSalle made the event into a series of presentations by the University of Utah Bioinformatics team which was very informative.

Next it was off to the American Medical Informatics Association Joint Summits in San Francisco in March. Presented two posters:

• Mapping Discrete EMR Data to the UMLS
• Design of a Registry Management Tool for EMR Data

In May and June, I taught my first online course for the Health Informatics program at Kent State University in Clinical Analytics. Earlier in the year I designed the course and had an experienced group of students who were eager to learn this emerging area of informatics.

Related to Clinical Analytics, I participated in the Clinical and Business Intelligence Data and Analytics Task force of HIMSS,  wrote a blog post on Teaching Clinical Analytics and then did a virtual event for HIMSS in September on “Transforming Care by Improved Decision Making: Deriving Meaning from Big Data.” Presentation is here.

September brought the Midwest Hospital Cloud Forum in Chicago where I presented on a panel: Closing the Loop in Healthcare Analytics – Correlating Clinical and Administrative Systems with Research Efforts to Deliver Clinical Efficiency in Real Time.

In early November, I was in Houston as the keynote speaker for the Texas Gulf Coast Association for Healthcare Quality. I gave two presentations:

• A Brief History of Social Media
• Trends in Social Media in Healthcare

See my post on Health IT Link, a new place to follow my content.

In January, I gave a lecture to the 3rd year medical students at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine on Biomedical Informatics challenging them to think about the future of algorithms in medicine among other topics.

Beginning in February, my chapter on eResearch in the book Health Informatics, was published.

Later in February, it was off to Las Vegas for HIMSS.  I was a guest of the Dutch delegation and spoke on Electronic Medical Records: From Clinical Decision Support to Precision Medicine. It was great to see Health IT social media colleagues at the HIMSS social media center. Also during February, I was invited to be on the advisory board for Health Works Collective and contributed to their interest in European trends with a blog post on How Europe is Growing Health Apps.

In March I attended the American Medical Informatics Association Clinical Research Informatics meeting in San Francisco. I presented two posters and one podium presentation all focused on the use of EMR data in research.

Then in April, it was on to the Netherlands for TEDx Maastricht and a visit to Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmeg en to meet at the ReShape & Innovation Center see a preview of the movie The Waiting Room. Also had a tour of the In Vitro programming there with ePatient Dave. Later in April I attend the Epic Research Advisory Council for the first time. Another valuable meeting of other user of the Epic EMR on the secondary use of EMR data in research and how to integrate research into the EMR.

Epic Campus near Madison, Wisconsin

May brought the publication of a blog post in iHealthbeat on A Look at Social Media in Health Care — Two Years Later , a follow up post on my original commentary on Healthcare social media from 2010. Also, I attended the Patient Experience Summit at the Cleveland Clinic which included fellow HealthWorksCollective bloggers Robin Carrey and Barbara Ficarra. Also published was a Technology Brief from the American Association of Medical Colleges on Mobile Apps. These one page summaries are targeted at medical school leadership.

June brought a trip to Barcelona for the Hospital Liquido conference. I presented an updated version of From Clinical Decision Support to Precision Medicine, This was a great opportunity to see one of Europe’s most beautiful cities as well as see the health IT innovation including Doctoralia.

Sagrada de Familia, Barcelona

In July I presented virtually at Salud 2.0 in Bilbao, another offering from Spain in medical innovation. My presentation on Social Media in Health Care: A Reasoned Approach was well received. I had the opportunity to answer questions via phone. Hopefully, I will be able to attend this conference in person in a future year.

In August, I was invited to become Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University in Health Informatics. Preparing a course in Clinical Analytics to be taught in May and June, 2013. This is a completely online masters program will be a new experience for me including online videos, readings, assignments and weekly discussion topics. At the end of August I attend the Ohio Health Data Symposium at Case Western Reserve University. Ohio like many states has a rich repository of public health information on everything from chronic diseases to behavioral health.

In early September, I completed a chapter on Computing and Information for a new textbook on Wireless Health: Remaking of Medicine by Pervasive Technologies. The concept of pervasive technology in healthcare is certainly at a tipping point. The book will be out in February 2013. Also in September I attended an internal Cleveland Clinic event, the annual Healthcare Technology Forum which showcased some of the many IT initiatives at all Cleveland Clinic locations including Abu Dhabi.

October 29-31, I attend the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit which focused on Orthopedics but included presentations by IBM, 23andMe and Explorys.

November took me to Chicago for the AMIA Annual Symposium. With record attendance (3500), I had the opportunity to organize and present a pre-symposium workshop on Clinical Research Informatics Infrastructure and a poster on the use of a wiki to educate healthcare professionals about secondary use of EMR data.  The same week I attend the Informatics Key Functional Committee of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards of the NIH. It was valuable to see what tools are being developed and particularly to attend the Integrated Data Repository workgroup. Also significant for AMIA this year was being featured on the website under Faces of AMIA and participating in the mentorship program, working with an up an coming informaticist, Anja Timmerman. I would encourage all experienced health IT professionals to participate in mentoring to bring along the next generation of informatics.

Chicago Millennium Park

In December I presented at Cleveland Clinic Medical Informatics Grand Rounds on Use of an EMR-based Registry to Support Clinical Research. Mature EMR systems are quickly become key tools in all aspects of research

Quite a year of opportunities and evolution in my thinking. As you can see, much of my work is shifting from social media in healthcare (although this is still an interest of mine) to research informatics and specifically secondary use of EMR data. More later on what next year might bring.

• Appointed as the Co-director for Biomedical Research Informatics for the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative, an NIH funded program through the Case Medical School
• Joined the Editorial Board of Tech Now Briefs of the American Association of Medical Colleges
• Invited to contribute to a theme issue on social media for Frontiers from the American College of Healthcare Executives
• Became a featured blogger for HealthWorks Collective
• Appointed as a reviewer for HIMSS 2012 abstracts – a new role for me
• Authored chapter on eResearch to a book on medical informatics to be ePublished in 2012
• Celebrated 30 years as an employee at Cleveland Clinic
• Leading a project to develop a clinical data warehouse for research
• Approaching 1000 connections on LinkedIn (969)
• 2881 followers on Twitter
• Klout score hovering around 42
• Invited to be on the advisory board of a health related startup

Clear answers are  hard to come by. Each hospital will need to develop its own policy and implementation of that policy in the use of social media in patient care environments. But when face time with the patient is the highest priority, social media may need to take a back seat.

Slides are here:

• January – hosted Lucien Engelen and others from Radboud UMCN Hospital in the Netherlands at the Cleveland Clinic for two days on everything from the group practice model to innovation and patient experience in two days.
• February- vacation in Naples, Florida
• March – HIMSS 2010 in Atlanta presenting twice and AMIA Clinical Research Informatics Symposium presenting a poster. Also visited the Googleplex. Stopped in Salt Lake City for a day on the way home.
• April – Toronto for the - TAHSN Education Day for Healthcare Communicators – spoke on social media
• May - J. Boye Conference in Philadelphia – spoke on social media in healthcare and published my first article in iHealthbeat “Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends”
• June – Visited Washington, DC. Vacation and some consulting
• July – Attended the Leadership Institute of the Group on Information Leadership of the American Association of Medical Colleges in La Jolla, California for a week and became a fellow.
• August – brief vacation in Salt Lake City including the Bonneville Salt Flats
• September – Named a fellow in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and named in a NIH grant on Risk Calculators
• October – Presented at Toledo (Ohio) Hospital on social media and attended the CTSA Innovative Informatics for Clinical and Translational Researchers at the NIH. Did live tweeting while attending the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit.
• November – coauthor of an article on a disease registry in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and another prespectives piece in iHealthbeat on the secondary use of EMR data.
• December – Second article on the chronic kidney disease registry published. A positive editorial by a well known informaticists about the registry published

Looking forward to more in the coming year – conferences, presentations, publications.

1. define the cohort of patients you want to study/monitor
2. define the data elements you want included
3. review and verify data elements with subject matter experts
4. set up a regular interval to extract the data
5. generate some test queries to verify the process
6. monitor to use of the data (ongoing governance)

Our initial experience with a Chronic Kidney Disease registry has been a success. We recommend that research issues be considered in any purchase and implementation of an EMR.

• Wes Rishel, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc.
• Matt Guldin, Product Manager, HealthNet, former Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan

I’ve known Matt for some time now – he brings a broad perspective on this and, of course, Gartner always has its hands on the pulse of things.

If you are interested in attending, contact Ben Dillion at ben.dillon@geonetric.com.

The HIMSS eHealth Special Interest Group will also meet in person at the Annual HIMSS conference in Chicago. The meeting will be  Monday, April 6, 2009 from 1:00 – 2:30pm at the Hyatt Conference Center in room 12AB. The topic is “Health 2.0.” Watch this blog for more info. I will be there.