The 2009 HIMSS Exhibition featured more than 900 exhibiting companies and health informatics-related organizations. Despite a stormy economy, many vendors reached networking milestones and experienced increased interest in certain products due to the stimulating effect of the federal stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Overall attendance at the 2009 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition was down a little more than five percent this year from 2008. Many exhibitors noticed the difference, including Gail Malcolm, HIMSS fellow and marketing manager for Siemens' Image and Knowledge Management Division.

"We're really seeing the economic impact this year," said Malcolm, "We certainly don't see the number of attendees that we have in the past, and a lot of vendors are cutting back on their staff. Everyone is trying to tighten the belt and for a lot of customers, the funding for travel has just been eliminated."
But despite fewer numbers, business was still booming due to the expected influx of funding from the recent Health IT stimulus bill.

"We've seen leads triple since the ARRA," said Lynne Durham, senior public relations officer for Sage Software. "Our industry is affected a lot less than other industries in large part because of the stimulus act."

Newer companies also experienced milestones, like Aruba Networks, which offers network integration solutions for health care centers. Since 2003 the company has secured 25 percent of the market for network integration and was flush with activity at HIMSS.

"We did better in the first few hours on Sunday than we did the entire HIMSS conference last year," said Manav Khurana, head of marketing for Aruba Wireless Networks.

Products for "Meaningful Use"

One aspect of the ARRA that has vendors and health care systems on high alert is the lack of a clear definition of "meaningful use" -- a standard of performance for health care information technologies. HIMSS offers guidelines for Clinical Diagnostic Support (CDS), e-Prescribing and quality outcomes and reporting, and many of the products on the showroom floor were a reflection of these processes.

Siemens displayed a software data management tool that uses algorithms to extrapolate data from clinical notes, reports and spreadsheets for quality control and reporting purposes. The REMIND Platform, which stands for Reliable Extraction & Meaningful Inference from Non-structured Data, automates reporting and helps free up personnel. Henri Primo, Siemens' national director of marketing, explained the cycle of required CMS and Joint Commission quality of care measures and the reporting that is required by health care centers using cardiac events as an example. Just a few years ago, there were only 10 core measures for heart failure. This October, the number of measures will be expanded to 72.

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