Yes America, infrastructure matters. Many HIMSS attendees no longer like the city, in large part because of infrastructure. The East Bank of New Orleans, including the convention center, had no drinkable water for parts of three days during the show.

Attention software vendor executives going to HIMSS13: Can’t wait for your big news to break at the show when you announce it Monday morning? And hoping you won’t be disappointed by the coverage like you were last year, the year before, the year before…?

CIOs must approach the vendor hall with caution.

The hype around the use of Big Data analytics would lead many to believe that we should be able to understand all things about anything, within any business, as deep or as shallow as we want to go. The reality is that most health care organizations are far away from the use of any high-end analytics systems to provide the insights that clinicians, physicians, and administrators should have available to them.

In recent public testimony before the HIT Policy and Standard Committees, Cerner CEO Neal Patterson called for mandated “directed query” messages so patients can authorize release of information, and a fix to the patient identifier problem. In response, Deborah Peel, M.D., founder of the Patient Privacy Rights organization, generally praises Patterson’s positions but points out some flaws in his identifier solution:

Attention vendors: Are you meeting with reporters during HIMSS13? Here are some tips to make the meeting more meaningful for you and the reporter. Translation: Here's how to get free ink out of the meeting.