< + > A Look at the Fall Health IT Conference Season

As most regular readers know, at Healthcare IT Today we go to far too many healthcare IT conferences.  Plus, the fall conference season is the busiest time of year for health IT conferences.  Just to give you a feel, Colin Hung and myself covered the following conferences:

• Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a Collaboration with the DirectTrust Summit
• SHSMD Connections 2022
• RARE Disease Patient Advocacy Summit
• Stericycle Communication Solution’s User Conference
• eClinicalWorks National Conference
• MGMA
• Health Connect Partners

Plus, on tap next month we’ll be going to PointClickCare User Conference, HCIC, CHIME Fall Forum 2022, HLTH 2022, and RSNA 2022.

More than halfway through the conference season there are some interesting takeaways about conferences and the health IT industry.

First, those who are attending these conferences are extremely happy to be back in person.  There’s an incredible feeling at these conferences to be together in person again.  While virtual events are great for education, there’s something different about being in person and the serendipity that can happen at in person events.

Second, there are still quite a few people that haven’t returned to conferences.  It’s hard to say if this trend is going to be long term or not.  The lack of attendees is particularly prominent for those from provider organizations.  Are they still so slammed with COVID and other pressures like the great resignation that they can’t leave the office?  Is there still a stigma of going to a conference when many others at your healthcare organization are struggling?  Did these people realize that conferences weren’t required for them to be successful?  Hard to say, but this is definitely something to watch.

Third, it seems like those conferences that offer something extremely practical and useful are doing well.  For example, user conferences seem to be doing really well since the things they learn at the conferences can really impact their daily lives.  Some of the more generic conferences are having a harder time attracting the right people.

Fourth, some vendors have realized that they didn’t need conferences to drive business and others have realized they’re extremely dependent on conferences to drive their business.  I have a feeling this will be a big part of the discussion at our Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference early next year.

I think most of us are grateful that conferences are back.  It’s great to see amazing friends and peers to learn what they’re doing and how we can improve our organizations.  It will be interesting to see how they’re impacted by many digital health companies going through layoffs and the digital health funding environment changing rapidly.  Looking at the HLTH conference coming up, they have 750 vendors listed which may show it hasn’t hit us yet.  That’s going to be an interesting crossover event with traditional healthcare, new healthcare entrants, startups, investors, and more.

We’ll keep doing our best to share the most interesting insights from all of these events.  How are you looking at conferences now?  What’s been your fall health IT conference experience?  What do you see happening for conferences going forward?