Conference highlights Digital Health Information week

MADISON - As Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle marks Digital Health Information week, health information technology leaders will gather for WTN Media’s seventh annual Digital Healthcare Conference. The event takes place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Fluno Center for Executive Education this Wednesday and Thursday, May 6 -7.

In naming May 3 to 9 Digital Health Information Week, Doyle called healthcare information technology (IT) one of the state’s major strengths benefiting a businesses and residents with quality health care and knowledge-based economic potential.

Verona-based WTN Media, publisher of WTN News and producer of Fusion CEO-CIO Symposium, brings national and regional healthcare information leaders to the state this week to discuss issues that will help leaders transform the healthcare industry through information technology and set future priorities.

Among the presenters is Dr. Thomas Handler, a senior healthcare analyst with Gartner Inc., who will lead a session that will take a look at the future of healthcare through scenario planning. Scenario planning is described as a “powerful methodology for visualizing the future.” In his keynote, “The Future of IT Enabled Healthcare,” Handler will apply this exercise to the complex field of information technology-enabled healthcare.

“We look 10 to 15 years down the road and say what are the possible situations that could arise in health care?” explained Handler in an interview. “This planning strategy presents four different scenarios of what healthcare could look like.” Gartner’s healthcare analysts have done this exercise several times, Handler said, considering different non-fixed variables to get a look at four different pictures. Variables could include proximity of care and how to determine reimbursement.

“You get a picture of what might happen. It’s not going to say which of these scenarios is going to happen but says think about the future based on which may happen. This planning ex allows CIOs (chief information officers) to say any one could happen.”

In addition to Handler’s presentation, topics cover how social networking is engaging the clinical community and high-tech healthcare delivery in the home. Conference chairman Dr. Barry Chaiken will discuss why healthcare should join the growing number of organizations that now use social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and even referral services like Angie’s List to connect professionally, and with customers. On Friday, UW-Madison nursing professor Patti Brennan, an international expert in healthcare technology, reveals how home healthcare increasingly is being aided by new technology. Devices now make it possible for professionals and non-professionals to deliver services once available only in a clinical setting.