In January, I went to my first Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was as massive as I heard, full of large screen TVs, many curved screens, drones, health trackers, etc. I spent most of the time at the Digital Health Summit – a well organized event including patient panels, fitness health device startups, wellness programs, and a demonstration of a exoskeleton. Got to catch up with some friends including Hugo Campos.

At the end of February, I  experienced my first HIMSS conference as staff rather than member. A series of full days in Orlando, most of the time spent managing the new Connected Patient Learning Gallery which was a big success with speakers including Lygeia Ricciardi and Regina Holliday both painting and speaking. Great to spend time with other HIMSS staff and understand what it takes to pull of a successful conference of 36,000 participants.

One of the advantages of working in the Global Center for Health Innovation in Cleveland is that it is attached to the Cleveland Convention Center. As a result, I had the opportunity to attend the Cleveland Clinic Patient Experience Summit in May, the Case Management Society of America in June and the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit in October.

In June, I had the opportunity to speak at the Northern Ohio HIMSS conference on the Value of Patient Engagement. There were several other chapter meetings, chapter leader institute, meaningful use meeting and the Nursing Informatics Institute, all well delivered HIMSS events.

In November, I had a great opportunity to present at the D-Data Exchange and attend the Diabetes Mine Innovation Summit. Although I had been to other events like MedicineX and Health 2.0 which advocate for patients and include patients throughout their programs, Diabetes Mine is a close-knit and strong advocacy group of Type 1 diabetics who know their technology and know policy to make their lives better. See my blog post about this on the Maker Culture in Healthcare.

In December, I returned to the HIMSS mHealth Summit in DC. Great presentations on cutting edge technology with an emphasis on what new ideas work and how they can impact patient outcomes. There was also talk about co-development of new apps and technology with patients. I also enjoyed the international flavor of the conference, especially the African representatives discussing ways to use mHealth to address the Ebola crisis.

I had book chapters published including:

• a chapter on social media
• A revision of my chapter on eResearch in the Health Informatics textbook
• A chapter on Computing and Information in a book on Wireless Health

Also, I had 3 publications, two journal articles as coauthor with the Chronic Kidney Disease Registry at Cleveland Clinic.

It was also an active year for blogging:

• Most of my blogging activity moved to the HIMSS blog
• In October, I began LinkedIn long posts on “This Week in Patient Engagement” which has been successful.

I continue to teach a online course on Clinical Analytics for Kent State University. Great students and a great opportunity. Looking forward to developing a second level course on analytics in 2015.

In 2015, there will be few posts here but more at HIMSS and LinkedIn. Please follow me there.

She sees 3 layers – Fiber, Sensors and Screens. That is, a layer of fiber as the backbone of the digital city, sensors everywhere to collect data about the city and screens to visualize data in ways that are meaningful for decision makers and citizens

• “Data on the walls of the city” – again, making data available everywhere to improve the life in the city.  This brought to mind the opening of  Fulton Center in New York City – the transportation hub which has screens everywhere.

Worth following this topic and read her book.

Robotics was a big hit as usual, but at Case, they are now experimenting with Biologically Inspired Robotics. See the video:

Biologically Inspired Unmanned Ground Vehicles from CWRU Biorobotics Lab on Vimeo.

Other interesting exhibits included:

• Research Computing which is developing a high performance cluster for everything from medical imaging to metallurgy and astronomy.
• A Digital Health Management Consultant: Markov Models Made Accessible - making these complex statistical models simple, with a nice demo using health financial data.
• The Center for Statistical Research, Computing, and Collaboration with an emphasis on innovative interdisciplinary research.

Looking forward to working on next year’s showcase.

On another note, I am also actively blogging for HIMSS and posting blogs from HIMSS volunteers. Check out the HIMSS blog.

Last week I had two book chapters published.

First, a new social media book published by HIMSS titled Applying Social Media Technologies in Healthcare Environments edited by  Christina Thielst, an early adopter of blogging in Health IT. My chapter is on “Social Media Hubs: Strategy and Implementation.” The book addresses a wide range of issues including legal and public health.

The second chapter is an update to Health Informatics: Practical Guide for Healthcare and Information Technology Professionals now in its 6th edition. My chapter is on eResearch, reviewing how information technology can support all aspects of the research workflow. The book is expanded adding several new chapters and is now endorsed by AMIA and available to AMIA members at a discount. Bob Hoyt, the editor from the University of West Florida, has created a companion website as a resource to informatics faculty and students called www.informaticseducation.org.

Both books are available in paper and as ebooks.

Another book chapter is nearing publishing. Will have an announcement about that soon.

First is SlideShare personalized year in review shows a definite peak in November after I uploaded two presentations I made in Houston on Social Media Intro and Social Media in Healthcare. My total views on SlideShare are approaching 100,000 with over 20,000 in 2013 alone. And it  is not only my most recent uploads which draw the traffic, some over five years old also draw ongoing interest and have 7000 views. Slideshare has been a source of speaking invitations as well.

Delicious has a similar reporting method. The Delicious Annual Report reminds me I joined in 2007 and has a nice constellation view of some of the content. It includes a word cloud, top finds and popular links. However, in starting my new job, I have decided to transition to Evernote in which I can save hyperlinks but also notes and other content.

Research Gate shows 329 publication views for 2013 with a Research Gate score of 11.33.

For Twitter, I found Simply Measured, should showed not only that I have 6380 followers but also my Klout score of 61.6 and 10,706 total tweets (not for last year only). Also displayed are key words (health care, top), audience distribution, audience by time zone,

My first trip mixed pleasure and work. Being in Salt Lake City, I agreed to speak to the Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science on some of my work at the Cleveland Clinic and the Cleveland Clinical and Translational Science Consortium. Bernie LaSalle made the event into a series of presentations by the University of Utah Bioinformatics team which was very informative.

Next it was off to the American Medical Informatics Association Joint Summits in San Francisco in March. Presented two posters:

• Mapping Discrete EMR Data to the UMLS
• Design of a Registry Management Tool for EMR Data

In May and June, I taught my first online course for the Health Informatics program at Kent State University in Clinical Analytics. Earlier in the year I designed the course and had an experienced group of students who were eager to learn this emerging area of informatics.

Related to Clinical Analytics, I participated in the Clinical and Business Intelligence Data and Analytics Task force of HIMSS,  wrote a blog post on Teaching Clinical Analytics and then did a virtual event for HIMSS in September on “Transforming Care by Improved Decision Making: Deriving Meaning from Big Data.” Presentation is here.

September brought the Midwest Hospital Cloud Forum in Chicago where I presented on a panel: Closing the Loop in Healthcare Analytics – Correlating Clinical and Administrative Systems with Research Efforts to Deliver Clinical Efficiency in Real Time.

In early November, I was in Houston as the keynote speaker for the Texas Gulf Coast Association for Healthcare Quality. I gave two presentations:

• A Brief History of Social Media
• Trends in Social Media in Healthcare

Quality professionals in healthcare including risk management and patient safety are relatively new to social media. They have some realistic concerns about HIPAA and sharing proprietary information on safety issues.  However, they are receptive to learning and sharing best practices. But where to start?

• Look for LinkedIn groups, for instance, the Institute for Healthcare Quality.
• Follow your own institution’s LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts
• Follow specific hashtags on Twitter, such as, #ptsafety
• Look for videos related to quality issues – search on YouTube
• Join a tweetchat such as #hcsm (health care social media)
• Look for social media policies
• Follow e-Patient blog posts
• Consider entering the Voices of Quality Video Contest from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

I think there is real potential for healthcare quality professionals to share best practices on social media and begin to develop communities around issues like patient safety, risk management, and patient satisfaction.

Also from HIMSS, I will be speaking at a virtual event, Transforming Care by Improved Decision Making: Deriving Meaning from Big Data on September 18. My topic will be “Developing a Centralized Repository Strategy: The Top Three Critical Success Factors.’

On September 9, I will be on a panel at the Midwest Hospital Cloud Forum in Chicago. The panel is titled, “Closing the Loop in Healthcare Analytics – Correlating Clinical and Administrative Systems with Research Efforts to Deliver Clinical Efficiency in Real Time.” I have posted slides on my initial thoughts on national trends related to the topic.

On a side topic, I was interviewed by Deanna Pogorelc of MedCityNews (a Cleveland news outlet) on the topic of “A healthcare innovator’s guide to must-know tech terms for the next decade of medicine.” I address the topics of Artificial intelligence/algorithm medicine and the Internet of Things

More on analytics and innovation in future weeks.

• physicians (and other healthcare providers) need their hands to work whether it is surgery or a physical exam
• physicians (and other healthcare providers) are mobile whether moving from one exam or hospital room to the next or traveling between care sites
• physicians (and other healthcare providers) are constantly interacting with people, either patients or colleagues
• physicians (and other healthcare providers) need to look things up, communicate with others
• physicians (and other healthcare providers) need to have clean hands – handling a mobile phone means transmitting germs, they need to wash their hands after each use even if they are using their mobile device at the bedside. The hands free commands in Glass enable them to avoid this
• he also thinks the privacy concerns are exaggerated – less deceptive than a mobile phone

Watch the full video interview.