OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

I am in Las Vegas attending HIMSS12 and I am compelled to write about how the show is going and state my overall observations of the conference. I’ll start off by saying that I am particularly amazed at how large the tradeshow has gotten in contrast to the other years I have attended. The question that begs to be asked, at the very least, is why is that? Is it because the human body is such a complex machine that it requires complex software with many different software applications to manage what can be the inherent complexity of diagnosing and treating patients?

Personally, I don’t know the answer! However, I do trust what one of our customers said, and it was something to the effect that the reason why he has to support so many disparate clinical information systems is because the human body is such a complex machine that it requires multiple vendors and niche solutions and no one vendor can build a monolithic solution encompassing all of the information management requirements.

I chuckle because, yes it is a long statement, but honestly I am 100% behind his argument. And thus I believe that there is a tight correlation to his comment with the number of vendors participating and exhibiting at the conference.

The last time I was at HIMSS was back in 2007, that’s five years ago. It doesn’t seem like a long time ago, but really it is. It’s phenomenal how so many things have changed, but yet some have stayed constant. So, your traditional powerhouse vendors in the healthcare provider market, of course, are still participating – and they won’t be leaving anytime soon. And yes they are showcasing their conventional wares. For them, their booth size, look and feel and traditional messages on their core competencies have not changed. They have, however, expanded their messages and a big portion includes mobility and portals.

It’s really mesmerizing how all of the vendors, including ourselves, can deliver healthcare portals and mobility solutions. Vendors from all shapes and sizes are talking about aggregation of clinical information, health information exchanges, clinical portals, clinical mobile apps, BI and to some degree social media and patient engagement. The Cloud message is creeping up, but being that patient data is sacred and it needs to be guarded dearly, many CIOs are somewhat reluctant to experiment with cloud offerings. And I wager to say that’s why we are not seeing a proliferation of the cloud message.

There are still of course many other niche vendors selling solutions from magnetic digitized white boards, imaging and DICOM toolkits, clinical image viewers, PACS systems, 3D post processing, Practice Management, EMRs, RIS, LIS, HIS, oncology, and long-term care case management; to integration middle-ware. I really thought that right up to 2007 vendors were going through a period of consolidation. And I didn’t expect for HIMSS to expand and be as large as it is today in 2012. But I suppose, that with the proliferation of mobility, social media, collaboration, and portal capabilities, this has brought forth a new breed of vendors, small and large, willing to partake in the journey of better managing the human body, our clinical conditions, and our clinical pathways.

Did you go to the show? What did you think of what you saw this week?

Alex Martinez, Product Marketing Manager
Healthcare Solutions ECM
OpenText Corporation

Visit OpenText at HIMSS12 – the largest annual healthcare IT conference and exhibit in the US. Over 20 current and former OpenText staff (including our former and recently retired CEO John Shackleton) will be on hand to showcase our company’s full line of healthcare solutions spanning healthcare records management to secure private health information exchange.

Stop by booth# 2474 at any time to view product demonstrations or to speak with OpenText healthcare experts. We encourage attendees to learn about our solutions and discover how they have helped thousands of healthcare organizations capture and streamline their paper-based clinical and business processes, manage compliance, mitigate risk and enhance delivery of services. If you’d like to schedule an appointment with us during HIMSS12, click here!

To learn more about OpenText healthcare solutions, visit our new healthcare microsite.

OpenText at HIMSS12 (Booth# 2474)
Venetian Sands Expo Center, Las Vegas
Exhibition Dates: Feb. 21 – 24, 2012

• Tuesday, February 21 – 1:00pm -6:00pm
• Wednesday, February 22 – 9:30am-1:00pm & 2:30pm-6:00pm
• Thursday, February 23—9:30am-1:00pm &2:30pm-6:00pm

Get Social at HIMSS12
Make sure you follow us on Twitter (our handle is @faxsolutions) and join the conversation using #HIMSS12 hashtag.

As much as it appears that the information we create, receive and use is becoming prevalently digital, I still seem to be getting an overwhelming amount of post pushed through my letterbox each morning. Of the mail I receive, 60% is unwanted, 35% comes from the same providers I signed up with online (with new offers to help me increase those bills even further) and then there are the postcards from Grandparents and an occasional copy of Wired magazine.

Aside from the needless destruction of our planet’s natural resources, there is also the issue of content responsibility. In many cases, the unwanted mail I receive contains information which collectively provides more data about me than I am comfortable sharing with the neighbor across the road who can be frequently found going through my trash looking for cans to recycle (there is a whole other blog article there). All this means that I spend far more time than I should, vetting my mail to determine what should be kept, what should be recycled and most importantly, what should be shredded. As frustrating as this may be, what happens when it’s not simply a family of three dealing with their mail but a company of fifty or five hundred employees drowning in documents from countless sources?
 
Do you have enough information on your information? 

Image Credit: Seth Anderson

Organizations have to not only contend with incoming mail but also all the information that is generated within the company; financial transactions, HR files, out bound customer correspondence, legal agreements, the list is endless.

And while businesses will be equally sensitive about the sanitization of company documents they are (or should be) more concerned again with the accountability and responsibility that comes with holding on to that information. In many cases, transactional and/or confidential documents need to be kept for prescribed periods of time and then destroyed according to a rigid schedule. If your business is impacted by MoReq, HIPAA, 21 CFR Part 11, Sec 17a, DoD 5015.2, UCC, Sarbanes-Oxley, UETA, ANSI, NARA, ISO 15489, VERS or FRCP then you are already aware of these significant challenges. If you are lucky enough to have made it through that list unscathed, there will likely be local, regional or national mandates on the usage, storage and disposition of specific types of documents. And lastly, there are your own internal policies that dictate how particular kinds of information need to be managed.
 
Getting Document Retention Right

If you have been researching this subject you will know that there is lot of information out there that discusses the setting up of retention and disposition plans which (when correctly deployed) do a reasonable job of managing the overall document lifecycle. What a lot of these approaches lack however, is a focus on the very beginning of the document lifecycle. The criteria for document destruction are often based on assessing the characteristics of each document. This means that the success of your retention plan is entirely based on the metadata collected about the document at the time it was indexed. This becomes particularly important when dealing with documents that rarely touched once they are captured. If your indexing process lacks accuracy or, you fail to capture the right data, your retention solution will never be the right solution. Also consider how retention requirements have changed over the last ten years. If past behavior is indicative of future behavior then expect to see increasingly stringent regulations going forward. Prepare for it now by setting up a comprehensive capture strategy rather than a “get-by” approach.

Image Credit: Gerwin Sturm

Most importantly, ensure that your solution for document retention is transparent and understandable by normal human beings.  It’s very easy to find your organization flying down an over-zealous formal records management rabbit hole. This might make for a great insurance policy on paper but will likely struggle to work as a solution that can move and bend as the business and external regulations evolve.

Suddenly those six Pottery Barn catalogs and fourteen credit card offers seem less of a burden…