When I first heard that Civitas and DirectTrust were collaborating to hold the Civitas Networks for Health Annual Conference and the DirectTrust Summit together, I thought that this is likely going to be one of the greatest gathering of healthcare interoperability professionals that has happened. As the title says, it’s going to be a kind of Woodstock of Healthcare Interoperability people, but the music is replaced with really nerdy conversations about standards, networks, identification, and trust.
What I think is interesting about seeing this conference is the theme of “Better Together.” This doesn’t always happen in the world of healthcare interoperability, so it’s great to see these two organizations come together towards the common cause of making sure the right healthcare information is shared with the right people at the right time. Plus, beyond just sharing data, the conference is focused on “Health Data Collaboratives & Information Exchange to Advance Health Equity.”
When you look at the sponsor list, you can see a whose who of healthcare interoperability companies. If you wanted to attend in person, unfortunately it’s too late to get an in-person pass to the event, but you can register for a very affordable virtual pass to the conference. Along with being able to watch a bunch of the conference sessions virtually, they already have 16 on demand sessions available right now. You can also follow along on Twitter by watching the #Together4Health2022 hashtag. I’ll be live tweeting a number of sessions as part of our healthcare IT conference coverage.
Just to give you a flavor of some of the on demand sessions that are already available, I’m interesting in the session on Moving the Needle on Interoperability with Quick Wins session by Kno2, WellSky, and AdventHealth System. Sometimes interoperability feels like a lot of talk and not enough action. So, it’s great to hear them talking about it in ways that actually creates quick wins for a healthcare organization.
I’m quite interested in the qualitative study session on using the Direct Standard for Patient Event Notifications from Allison Thurman at University of Alabama Birmingham. These notifications have been in place for long enough for us to be able to know about what’s working and what’s not.
There are a number of health equity sessions as well which is no surprise given the conference theme. Everyone I talk with agrees that one key to addressing health equity is having the data to understand the problem. Hard to address a problem that you don’t understand. So, I’ll be keeping an eye out for the data that helps us better understand the problem and the actions that can be taken to address health equity.
Will you be at the conference? If you’re not there, what would you like us to keep an eye out for? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
Note: DirectTrust and Kno2 are sponsors of Healthcare Scene.
