Here is a short video interview I did about the SIIM Hackathon. Clearly, I am not quite ready to go into broadcasting. 🙂
Article – Why You Hate Work
This NY Times article is really about employee engagement, but I guess the confrontational title gets more clicks. It has lots of stats, which I like. If you manage people check it out.
Healthcare Informatics 100 – Gold Rush for Health IT Vendors
The latest edition of the top 100 healthcare IT vendors, by revenue, has been released. This article provides some insight, and here is the actual list.
For some perspective, here is a blog post from the Editor-In-Chief of Healthcare Informatics, Mark Hagland, that includes and analysis of the list and some trends over the past few years.
An excerpt: “…five years ago, the 2009 Healthcare Informatics list revealed that the vendor with the highest HIT revenues had $2.98 billion in 2008 revenues, while the 100th and last on the list had $5.1million in 2008 revenues. This year, the top company reported $3.4 billion in revenues, while the 100th largest company reported $35 million in revenues. In 2009, reporting $35 million in revenues would have put a vendor company up at number 65th on the list.”
Article – SIIM Hackathon gives DICOMweb a coming-out party
Check out this article in Radiology Business Journal on the recently concluded Hackathon at the SIIM 2014 Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California.
Here are my other observations on SIIM 2014, in case you missed it.
SIIM 2014 Reflections
Another SIIM Annual Meeting is in the books. As usual, it was a great event with tons of great information, discussions and networking.
Some observations…
- There are some very bright folks working in clinical informatics that us imaging informatics folks should be collaborating with. They have cool stuff, we have cool stuff. We need to build bridges and keep each other informed.
- Enterprise Imaging is slowly catching on. We need more details documented, such as exactly what values we should be putting into which attributes/fields for specific image types, but the overall message of the need for clear and consistent metadata along with the images is finally taking hold.
- The vendors I spoke to were happy (happier than usual). It is no secret that SIIM is more about education, learning, networking and relationship building than high volume lead generation. It attracts thought leaders and people tasked with knowing how to get things done. Its members are loyal and have long careers in imaging informatics. Still, vendors that I visited seemed happy with the attendees that came through their booths. One emerging vendor closed a new customer on the exhibit hall floor (a first for them).
- Hackathons are fun and a great way to learn about new technology. The SIIM Hackathon was a ton of work to pull off, but worth every minute. When you give smart creative people effective new tools, they can do amazing things in a short period of time. Seeing the applications and intgrations that the Hackathon participants completed in a few days (hours, in some cases) was great.
- Twitter is not only a fun to interact with friends during the meeting, but also a great way to get key points of learning (in near real-time) for sessions that you could not attend. Twitter and climbing the SIIM Twitter Leaderboard ladder is also at the level of an addiction for some (you know who you are).
- Long Beach is a great little place for a meeting.
- SIIM meetings are very well run. The sessions rarely experience any technical issues. Speakers are well prepared. The agenda is clear and finding the rooms are easy. Sometimes we only notice when things go wrong, but fail to notice when they go right. SIIM staff has this ‘running a meeting’ thing down to a science.
That’s it for now. Already looking forward to SIIM 2015 in Washington D.C.
Going back to Cali (Long Beach, that is)
About to board a jetplane to the SIIM 2014 Annual Meeting in Long Beach California. Very much looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues, as well as learning lots and recharging with some great new ideas. A lot has changed in our industry since last year, so it will be an exciting meeting.
And I hope to get some sun while I am there. 🙂
Article – Corporate Acquisitions of Startups: Why Do They Fail?
This is a great article. With the rampant acquisition of smaller companies by larger ones that is common in the healthcare IT industry, and the inevitable slowing or death of product innovation and organizational momentum when they merge (read as: are absorbed), it is very useful to know why this happens.
On a related note, if you are interested in start-ups vs. established corporate vendors, check out my article on Where to Build It?.
Blog – Who should pay Doctors?
I enjoyed reading this blog post. It provides some important context around the costs of a primary care practice and the extra, unpaid work they often have to complete in order to “do the right thing” for their patients.
Having gone from being an employee to a business owner/operator, I can attest to the added business and accounting skills one needs, along with the extra work that has to be done, to ensure that the operation is viable. I have been lucky enough to find many IT tools, and services providers, to minimize the effort to run my business, but I am not dealing with all the regulations and complexity of multiple payers’ policies that doctors are. How can healthcare IT let doctors get back to provide care?
New JDI Article Published – Informatics Challenges—Lossy Compression in Medical Imaging
An article I co-authored with Kinson Ho on the implications on informatics and information management when applying lossy compression to medical images in DICOM has been published. Check it out here.
It also explores whether wavelet-based compression (e.g. JPEG2000) still provides the value that it once promised. A comparison of different approaches to preserve system and network resources is included.
It is available in Journal of Digital Imaging.
NEW: Publications and Tools Page
I have created a new page on my Web site to make my content easier to find. I have a number of articles, eBooks and interactive tools available now, or in development.
Check it out here, or look for the page on the menu above.
Don K Dennison 