After spending last week at the HIMSS (Healthcare and Information Management Systems Society) conference in Atlanta, I came away with some good information and some interesting observations.

Unlike most vendors who work with hospitals, I was not there to exhibit. I was an attendee, and I go to get the latest information regarding healthcare IT and security. Some of the topics in the education sessions are more important to me than others, but that's the great thing about this conference - you get to pick what classes you go to and there's a wide variety.

Most attendees upon learning I was not exhibiting would ask "Why are you attending?" My answer is an emphatic "The real question is, why are your other vendors NOT attending?" If you are going to manage terabytes of healthcare information, I believe this conference is a must. They cover everything from "Meaningful Use" (which I'm not as interested in) to "HITECH Security" which everyone should be interested in.

My second observation was how little most attendees seemed to understand about the new HITECH rules and penalties associated with it. I only watched one speaker get as animated as I do when talking about how important those changes are. Unfortunately only a couple hundred people attended that class, when the session on HITECH "meaningful use" had 2000 or more attendees.

Even though there's already been one high profile lawsuit filed by the Connecticut State Attorney General under the HITECH act, nobody seems to quite get the importance yet. In fact, out of the 200 who attended that class only myself and two or three others even raised our hands that we'd heard of the case.

Unfortunately I believe the government will be happy to make an example of a few more hospitals before everyone notices.