Just me reporting back from LA.
Today in health it vibe on Tuesday morning. Gosh, I don't even know what to call it. I was going to call it day one, day two day three, but we've been here since Saturday. So just Vive on Tuesday morning. We'll get to that in a minute. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and create, or this week health. Instead of channels and events dedicated to transform healthcare. One connection at a time. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.
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I am so excited and I really am thankful. Captain is walking around the floor, getting a lot of pictures, raising a fair amount of money when I think CTG and short test for helping us to. Sponsor that, plus just the individual donations are rolling in. We've already had over a thousand dollars in individual. Donations.
Those are people who are scanning. The barcode on captain. And giving directly to the campaign. So really appreciate you. And thank you for doing that. One last thing, share this podcast with a friend or colleague, I'm just going to keep encouraging you to mentor people in the industry. If you're listening to this, you're already above average and you should be metric.
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All right, let's talk about five. Vibe has been overshadowed in our space, so let's be real clear. There's the digital health space. There's the investor space. And then there's the provider space. There's even payers here as well. But it's been overshadowed by . The Optum change healthcare and , the United health care. , Breech, I guess we'll just call it what it is.
And it's, you have CIO's who chose not to come here because they're in the middle of it. We have CIOs who are stepping out at various times to go to meetings. So even if they are here, their mind is preoccupied with the change healthcare breach. I'm not going to go in depth in that today.
I might later on in the week, with drugs on board now, quite frankly, he is laser focused in his two and a half minutes real on. Topics such as this and cybersecurity. So I will probably cut back a little bit on the cybersecurity reporting and let him. Run with it. You'll get a deeper dive on it. But I will comment on this later in the week. Because it is a. Such a huge issue in our in our industry and the whole concept of connecting back into this is interesting.
Now what I'm hearing from the floor and talking to people. Is essentially United healthcare and Optum their tools are ready to be connected back into. So people are doing their due diligence. They're figuring out how to connect back to those. To change. Healthcare is a completely different animal. And I, again, I, this is all anecdotal at this point, and, it's conversations from the floor, but it sounds like change healthcare was really hit hard. And it could be quite frankly it could be weeks before that is restored.
And so various health systems are at different points in their recovery. And and their planning, quite frankly. So it's been again, that's just, what's over the entire floor and people are talking about. The the conference itself is a, it's pretty well established conference now.
I, I. If I had to estimate. I'm going to say. I don't know somewhere around 10,000 people, maybe a little less than that, but somewhere around 10,000 people are here. I would say from the provider space. well Attended, but anytime they go to the far extremes of the coasts, when they go to California, when they go to Florida and they're good locations to go to.
I think there's a down tick, like when you go to California, that people on the east coast are gone. Boy, that's a significant commitment to fly all the way across the country to be a part of that. Now, if they're speaking. They're on panels or whatever. I think people will make that make that trip.
But there are so many conferences for people to go to at this point. I don't feel like they feel the need to be at any specific conference and they feel like they're going to catch up. I know that. William Walters, for example, went to the gardener conference cause he feels like there's more value there. And quite frankly, there could be, it depends on what kind of CIO you are and what kind of information you're looking for.
If you're looking for information about the innovations and where they're coming, the floor at five is a good floor to go to a lot of small booths. I think that's a mark of a good conference because you get to talk to. Some of the up-and-coming organizations and because there's money here. A lot of them are here looking for funding. But they're also talking to the healthcare providers. That could be a partner in of interest as they move forward. So the floor itself is interesting as well because they have these one-on-one partner meetings.
And so if you're an attendee and you want to get your badge paid for. You can essentially sign up to go talk to the partners directly. And you pick the ones that are of most interest to you. Now I've gotten mixed results on this, but a majority of people really like this, both on the partner side. And on the healthcare leader side healthcare leaders, like it, because it In one person's words, it keeps me from having to walk the floor. Now I don't recommend that.
I think you should walk the floor. You should figure out how to protect your email address. If you want to do that and whatnot, and just walk the floor, have the conversations. I think they're worth having, I learned a ton by going from booth to booth and talking to people. With that being said, You can talk to a fair number of people, 15 minutes, speed dating no commitment, just a, what are you doing?
What are you doing? Kind of conversations. And so as a healthcare leader, you can identify the. Five to eight that you want to talk to go talk to them very quickly. Get the information and move on now. I've had other people say to me if I want to talk to them, they'll come to my office. And that way I don't have to put up with the natural followup.
That's going to happen with the, with salespeople and other things that are going to happen. I, quite frankly, if I were coaching the partners, I would say, use your discernment. Identify from that meeting. If there is interest, if there's not interest, don't put them on your email list and start spamming the crap out of them. You put them on a different list.
That's one of keep in contact with them. But don't spam them with everything that you got. And the keeping contact one is more like, Hey, it was great to talk to you at chime and love to follow up with you in the future. And I'll probably reach out every six months or so. Our. Just see how things are going and see if a further conversation makes sense.
Something to that effect. When you put them on your newsletter list and your whatever, and they start getting emails on a, on whatever basis they, they put you in that category of an organization that is just after the sale. And that's not what you're after. What you're after is a relationship that you together can solve problems.
Anyway. With that being said, partners love these meetings because it gets them top of the funnel leads. End of discussion. But it also gets them pretty good conversations. 15 minutes. One-on-one. Gets you a good start to a relationship. And a discussion. So that's been pretty good as well. I'm going to be honest with you.
I've attended sessions because they're on the floor. In the fact that I, if I see something going on, that I am interested in, I will stand at the back for five to 10 minutes, but I'm doing interviews. I'm talking to so many people that I have not gotten to go to any sessions. I hope to do that today, which is Tuesday.
My schedule slows down a little bit and then Wednesday, my schedules. Pretty much wide open but I'm only here in the morning. So I know that I'm not getting the most out of this conference from that perspective. I'm not listening to the panels and I know there's been some good ones. I saw a trust, a spring man, sod shouter. Artery on a panel talking about and Brian stair with about governance and about AI policy and those kinds of things.
And I thought, and I got about five minutes of that one. It was interesting to hear them. Discussing where they are. I think they're on a policy board together. Which is how that group. Got together. I think that would have been one to, to watch and would have been interesting.
I'm going to a shisha treasure and niece Chopra or doing something today. And Aneesh is one of my favorite people. I love sheesh. Treasure as well. So I'm curious what they're going to be talking about with regard to interoperability. So I'm going to pop into that if I can, this morning in between interviews. And talked to them as well.
If you are like a CIO that's looking for trends and innovation and that kind of stuff. In healthcare specifically, I think you come to this conference. If you're looking for. Trends that are influenced by outside the industry. I think you go to the Gartner conference. I think each conference has its own flair and what it attracts and what it's good at.
And you have options. You know where you're going to go. Saw a ton of people. So we had our. 2 29 meetup yesterday afternoon, which was great. I think the team said about 40 health care leaders popped in. And then some of our partners popped in as well. It was great to see everybody and we are excited.
We are we're launching city tours. And talk to them about that. Obviously we have the new site, which I've talked to you about on ma. Several occasions. And I , told them, we're looking for healthcare. Leaders who want to be curators that's people who read the news and come across a good story. And they just text it to us.
We make things as easy as possible, but we're trying to create a new site that is relevant to you in the industry. And we take out the noise and just have the signal. And we came up with this idea of curators. If you're a healthcare leader that reads the news often, and you probably are go to this week, health.com become a contributor. Become a curator.
You have to use your health system, email address. If you use your Gmail address, I just ignore it. Quite frankly, as a contributor. And if you are with a partner, I'm sorry, this is not an all play. This is a, this is healthcare providers. Curating news for other healthcare providers. That's one of the ways that we are trying to ensure we get the highest quality. Content that is relevant and we don't intersperse it with ad kind of stories and that kind of stuff.
So I don't know. Hey, we're trying to figure this out as we go along, trying to be a resource for you and the industry trying to be your partner in all this. Yeah, we talked about those things and then last night I'm up really early because because I didn't record a show yesterday. And also because I'm still on east coast time.
So I'm waking up at three o'clock in the morning, out here and doing stuff. But I would imagine given the number of things that were going on last night and the times that cell phone were starting. There's going to be some bloodshot eyes this morning. And some people who are moving a little slow. That was not me.
I stayed on east coast time. I was quite frankly, in bed by eight o'clock and I felt. Like an old man, but I reminded myself that was 11 o'clock on, on the east coast, which is a well past my bedtime. So I'm sorry. I didn't see all of you last night. If you're listening to this. And hope to see you today on the floor and we can catch up some more. That's all for today.
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