Well, not quite, but as a physicist working on the grand unified theory would say: The arrows are pointing into the right direction.
While patient care is not delivered virtually quite yet, the experts in the field of Health Information Management and Systems will have their annual gathering in Atlanta in early March (http://www.himss.org) to ensure we'll get there in the future. If you haven't been to the HIMSS show yet - it is an exciting conference with well over 20,000 attendees.
Questions on health record portability, privacy, interoperability, and the plain old task to get physicians to warm up to the idea of using a computer as the primary means of documenting clinical information will be at the center of the discussions, while musings on whether the federal government is going to pay for your healthcare IT initiative are sure to be overheard as well.
I myself will make my way up to Atlanta to find out what's going on in the industry and I seek to speak to many attendees and presenters on application delivery challenges in this unique field. Stay tuned on these pages for regular updates and follow me on twitter for a play by play of my HIMSS journey.
Before I pack my bags and decide whether or not to include foul weather gear and snow shoes, please let me know what specific topics around healthcare IT you are interested in.
Twitter: @florianbecker
Florian