Today the sessions were less oertanent to my work than yesterday but still pretty good. I was fascinated by the presentation of the Rochester HIE which is their wnyhealthelink. I asked why the HIEs aren't launching patient portals. According to the speaker, they had one and shut it because for a few reasons. He cited complexity of managing patient expectations and authentication as you'd expect. However, what I hadn't thought about was that MU 2 credits are based on the individual facilities having their own portals to get credit for Secure Health Messaging, "View, Download, Transmit, etc" This seems like a total disservice to the patients to me. Having 3 portals of my own to manage I am already frustrated. Systems like microsoft health vault could help. Maybe its the answer, to let the patient manage it at their own place. But what patients have time for that.

If the Federal or at least state government could just handle it all it would be easier for the patient. I think a lot of people are afraid of this due to the whole "death panel" drama. Really though not having a centralized place is just going to make for more duplicate tests, inconvenience for the patient, more mistakes and more complexity in diagnosis.

The conference is so massive. These pics don't even do it justice. I completed my task of finding the right contact at our EMR vendor to get started with their new API. Hopefully the promises pan out.

The Microsoft stand looks packed but they were giving away free beer and food at the time. Overall, their was so much schwag. I got nothing so far besides a mint because I didn't feel like carrying or advertising anything for other people.

In generally find myself sad after the conference each day. While my job is fun and rewarding I feel like I am missing out on all kinds of fascinating health care technology, half of which I feel capable of making myself. I also feel like I could be involved in stuff that helps more people. Maybe I could still do my job but try and get more involved with our local HIE.

Lots of interesting sessions. The vendor floor is so massive it takes like an hour to walk across and they even have a trolley. I have never seen anything like it.

Last night we checked out Sasha at Firestone in Orlando on Sunday night. The venue was amazing. Sasha was kind of boring. The place had no trebble inside. At one point Sasha left the stage for like 5-10 minutes and the music kept going and changing over and mixing as though he was still DJing. This totally broke the illusion that he was actually DJing to me.

I left and went to the outdoor dance area that had some other DJ. The music was so good and he was real cute. I danced so hard. I tried looking up who it was but I can't find any info.

The sad part was that the outdoor area was also a smokers lounge. I found it so annoying to dance in a smoky place. Esp cigar smoke. There is so much irony to me being at a healthcare conference for a cancer center dancing in a cloud of cigar smoke. Why do people still smoke tobacco?

It seems like every hotel has pools here but our hotel has the best pools. The main pool is like a city block big. I can't wait to check it out later in the week. There is a gym, a bar and strangely a Starbucks and dominos pizza. It looks like additional retail is being built.

According to the website, rooms are now $499 a night but there was a special with Orbitz for $209 a night for a week which was cheaper than a regular hotel room yet its a whole 2 bedroom apartment with kitchen, living room and balcony patio.

This is much better than my experience with Orbitz and Expedia in Portland where I ended up in some isolated hotel way outside the city.

We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and bought some amazing local strawberries and oranges. They smell so good in the warm car. We also got some delicious looking pecans from a farm in Georgia. They are big and fancy unlike the broken ones I normally get.

I want to go to a large farmers market and see if anyone has finger limes down here.