
Nine From ViVE: Takeaways From the Digital Health Conference
This 4-day event drew thousands of health care leaders to Nashville, Tennessee; in this column, Ron Southwick, editor of Chief Healthcare Executive, shares his thoughts from conversations and panels in Music City.
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The ViVE Conference is now a memory, and thousands of health leaders seemed to relish their time in Music City.
More than 7500 health leaders from around the country attended the second ViVE conference,
Before outlining my takeaways, I chose not to include the horrific fatal shooting of 3 adults and 3 children at the Covenant School.
The horrific event rattled Nashville and the entire nation. It disturbed many of those at the conference, with some speakers acknowledging the tragedy and the need to address gun violence.
At such a heartbreaking moment, I found it comforting to talk to a number of people - and hear from so many speakers - who are genuinely striving to help others, including the most vulnerable among us.
But the shooting is far too important to be causally inserted in a list of learnings from a healthcare conference.
There are plenty of worthwhile insights from ViVE’s panel sessions, interviews with healthcare leaders and discussions with those attending the conference. I’m leaving Nashville with a host of stories that I’ll be publishing in the coming days and weeks.
But for now, here’s my rundown of what I heard, what I learned, and what I expect will stay with me.
1. Staffing: Every health care leader I’ve interviewed over the past year has offered the same response when asked about shortages of talent: it’s a big problem. And leaders expressed it remains a top concern. Organizations appear to be more receptive to solutions to automate some tasks, at least in part because they’re struggling to find people anyway.
2. Cybersecurity: Clearly,
3. Health equity: This was a major topic at ViVE, with several panel discussions, and
4. Focus on patients and clinicians: Tech companies came to ViVE to pitch digital health products aimed at improving patient care, or at least making it easier for patients to navigate the health system. And those efforts are generally lauded. But healthcare leaders and panelists advised tech firms to think carefully about making life easier for doctors and nurses who would have to use their products. If it’s adding work to clinicians, health systems will have less interest. I’ll be writing more about this in the coming days.
5. Know the business: Health system leaders seem to have less patience for pitches from companies that don’t understand the industry.
6. Interoperability: Over and over, speakers talked about the importance of exchanging data more easily across the health care ecosystem to develop a better understanding of patient issues and to improve outcomes. Interoperability was a key topic at ViVE and there’s a general sense that
7. Mental health: Leaders reiterated that
8. Regulation and legislation concerns: A number of health leaders mentioned concerns about proposed regulations that could
9. The kids: At a panel on health challenges affecting children, including the triple-demic and
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