Today I arrived at the 2012 Fall CIO Forum for CHIME. I’ve wanted to go to this event for quite a while. My fellow blogger, Neil Versel, had often told me about how great the event was and so I wanted to see it first hand.
Tonight I heard an almost emotional Farzad Mostashari speak and then got to mingle with all of the CIO’s at the evening event. A few things I’ve already noticed that I found interesting.
First, Farzad has really refined his pitch for healthcare IT. He makes a really compelling case for what’s possible and a really common sense analysis of why we need to start using healthcare IT now. If I were to put a title on Farzad’s talk at CHIME, I’d call it, “Stop with the Excuses, We Can Do Better.”
Everything at the event is high class. You can tell that no expense was spared to make sure that the major healthcare IT contributors are treated well.
I wasn’t that surprised, but it’s unfortunate that I was by far the youngest person at the conference (at least from what I saw). One wife of a CIO I talked with asked why there weren’t more young people present. Then she said, “Don’t these hospital CIOs want to groom the next generation of leaders? Why are they holding on so tightly and not preparing for the future.” It’s a good question I wasn’t really sure how to answer.
There are a lot of really powerful people at the event. It was fun to see Judy Faulkner mingling with people. I saw John Glaser. In many ways, it’s a Who’s Who of hospital health IT.
While there are many Hospital CIOs at the event, there are also a lot of vendor representatives. Not surprising considering the amount of budget these hospital CIOs control.
I was amazed at how many people were “old friends.” You could see that many of those attending have been doing so for years and this was their annual visit with colleagues. As a first time attendee, you’d think that I might not feel very welcome, but the opposite was the case. All of the hospital CIOs I met were very friendly, kind and happy to engage.
More on the event tomorrow. If you’re in Palm Springs at the event, I’d love to talk with you. Just leave a comment below or send me a tweet.
