The HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition headed back to Orlando's Orange County Convention Center next year.
It will be held in the center's west concourse March 11-15, 2024.
The Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference attendance has bounced back steadily since the Covid-19 pandemic and is expecting 40,000 attendees for 2024. The 2023 conference at McCormick Place in Chicago saw over 30,000 attendees, which HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf said was a 34% increase from the 2022 conference in Orlando.
Thanks to a new partnership, Informa Markets will manage the conference, and promises improved digital features like product discovery apps. An Informa news release said that by taking over operations, HIMSS will have more bandwidth to delve into content development. The team at Informa's Ft. Lauderdale South Florida Ventures division will manage the five-day event.
Conference content may include hot topics like data access, data protection and health equity, like this year’s event.
AI, which was a dominant theme at the 2023 conference, also is likely to return as a topic for sessions next year, given that artificial intelligence is a fast-unfolding phenomenon touching every area of health care. A blog post on the G2 Software website described a Microsoft-hosted panel discussion on practical uses for AI in health care, like using AI to translate jargon-heavy summaries and lab reports into understandable language. Next year also could see other big tech companies leading the dialogue on AI opportunities that don’t currently exist today.
While many conference details are still up in the air, one aspect of early planning is already complete: calls for education session proposals are already closed, as are calls for peer reviewers.
Meanwhile, in a video released Aug. 11, Wolf spoke about increasing reliance on digital health care: “There are a number of major lessons [to be learned] out of the pandemic with digital health. The encounter-based paradigm that we all grew up with … was severely disrupted. Now, the basic functional level is a big drive towards digital health.”
Wolf said health care can be more sustainable and accessible if every patient has access to secure digital health care and data.
“When we think about digital health, we often start with Internet connectivity. If I'm really going to hit the masses, if I'm really going to hit scalability so I can have a positive impact on health equity, I need to build those applications that aren't totally dependent on 5G or even LTE. I need to be thinking 3G. I need to be thinking basic phone services as well. That will open up 30% to 40% of the market.”
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