Miami BeachThis blog was created to serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas, and we’ve loved the responses, reactions and dialogue it’s generated over the past several months. Yet for as much as we’ve all come to rely on the blogosphere for the latest and greatest in everything from kayaking to healthcare IT, this week’s Picis Exchange customer user conference in Miami Beach was a great reminder of the power and effectiveness of in-person collaboration and discussion.

Surrounded by health care enthusiasts from nearly 100 hospitals, integrated delivery networks, and government health systems from across six countries and 28 states, I’ve been saturated all week with the most innovative yet real-world ideas from the men and women who serve on the front lines of health care IT every day. Nurses, physicians, IT professionals and administrative staff have spent the past few days sharing stories about how they’re demonstrating meaningful use, moving towards health information exchanges and using evidence-based medicine to improve patient care, by utilizing the data and information they derive from our systems. Not only that, they’re also able to trade war stories and come up with solutions even we might not have thought of.

There have been many instances of idea exchange during the conference, but I would like to highlight one great example. Over the first couple of days of the conference, several different users from a variety of hospitals have asked me about strategies to enable remote access to Picis clinical applications.  I gave two presentations about remote ICU functionality, but these users were looking for ways to access Picis functionality from across all of our care areas.  Well, you can imagine how excited I was to be able to point them to a presentation by a Picis user from the UK, who not only talked about remote access to all of their Picis applications, but also connected to his hospital’s live Picis installation!

It doesn’t get much more remote than the 4500 miles across the Atlantic from Miami to London, but there it was. Obviously, to satisfy privacy concerns, we were looking at demonstration patients, but the applications and their full functionality were right there. It was exactly what those users were looking to see, and it was another user, from another country, sharing their solution with them.  That is what Picis Exchange is all about.

Meaningful use has obviously been on the agenda in some way for nearly every session over the past few days – everyone from our customers to our CEO Todd Cozzens to our keynote speaker Tommy Thompson has shared their perspective. And as the initial ARRA deadlines loom ahead, this kind of collaboration across hospitals, partners and even vendors is going to become more and more critical. It will be amazing to see how far our customers have come when we meet at Picis Exchange 2011. Until then, please continue to check in and weigh in on Healthcare-Exchange.com all year long!

-  Carlos M. Nunez, M.D.