Greetings from HIMSS in sunny San Diego. It was a 12 hour day of meetings, setting up our correspondence station and having several meetings and confirming interviews and meetings that we will be involved in here at the HIMSS conference.

We arrived Saturday and spent two hours roaming around the beautiful Convention Center. From the bayside, we were able to watch tankers, sailboats, kyaks and Saturday walkers along the beach. Inside, final preparations were underway: just-in-time training of volunteers and temp staff, off loading of equipment and supplies, room setups, and the thousand details that go into an event hosting 19,000+ guests!!

Sunday morning found us preparing to present our workshop on Physician Adoption of an electronic medical record system. Preperation went very smoothly and allowed for some visiting with old friends and making some new.

At 8AM this morning, the 17,553 registered attendees from 40 countries, started lining up and adding pressure to the convention center entrance and hallways. Opening day registration is up 15% from 2002, so the market and industry of Health and medical information is clearly on an upswing. It is estimated that by the end of the conference there will be at least 20,000 attendees. Of these there is to be an estimated 7700 non-exhibiting attendees, 1300 have registered as CIO's or senior executives, so the complexion of this year's conference is that of decision makers and industry leaders.

The 686 exhibitors represent a 13.5 % increase in exhibitors from 2002 in 236,000 square feet of exhibit space!! A trolley runs through the center of the exhibit space!

Today the results of the 14th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey were reported. The survey is sponsored by Superior Consultant Company, Inc. The suvey is designed to obtain information about IT priorities and a wide variety of information about the use of IT to enhance healthcare. The survey is of senior IT leadership, CEO's, Physician and Nursing leadership. I'll be digesting the overall report and presenting a summary review later, but a few highlights that caught my eye might interest you:

• The promotion of patient safety has replaced HIPPA compliance as the #1 priority for the next 12 months.
• Top business prorities for the coming two years include:
• Reducing medical errors
• HIPAA compliance
• responding to cost pressures
• responding to medicare cutbacks
• improving operational efficiency
• improving quality of care, availability, and retention of staff and consumerism
• The IT barriers that were enumerated include lack of financial support and vendor inability to effectively deliver product
• A new question this year queried the responents about their satifaction with outsourced vendor services.
• Although the result was not one of 100% satisfaction, it is thought that the responses are in the direction of satisfaction and reflect on the levels of adoption of this method of managing resources.

Close to 40% felt that they would definitiely increase their budgets; 5% felt they would be decreasing theirs.

Overall, the survey reported

1. An increase in interest in IT and patient safety
2. A lessening of interest in HIPAA compliance
3. More interest in EMR's
4. Increasing in staffing budgets
5. Continued outsourcing of various IT functions

Executives seem to be committed to using technology to drive down costs overall.

Tonight many of the vendors hosted receptions for partners, and customers in the adjacent GasLight District. The Gaslight District of San Diego is festive and with the abundant sunshine and relatively mild evenings, it is a great venue to welcome so many guests.

The conference center reflects adoption of technology as the attendees have connectivity all over. If you want, the conferenece schedules each day can be beamed to your PDA!! Mail Stations and internet access is available throughout the exhibit and educatioanl session areas.

More tomorrow!!