Looking Back on the 7th Academic Conference on Health IT Systems Organized by the Hospital Italiano

The leading event in Healthcare IT in Argentina and Latin America, which was held between the 28^th and 30^th of November 2012 at the Hospital Italiano in Buenos Aires was free and part of the annual program of the Hospital’s Healthcare IT Department.

This edition attracted over 600 participants, 200 in person and 420 who registered online, meaning that the event had connections with over 15 countries, especially Chile, Peru, the USA, Colombia, Uruguay and Venezuela. With a record international attendance, participants were able to enjoy conferences and panels with world-renowned speakers such as Charles Friedman, Patricia Abbott, William Hersh, William Tierney, Judy Logan, Guilherme Del Fiol (USA), Javier Carnicero (Spain), and Andrés Fernández (Chile), amongst others. There was also significant representation from the region through 30 national and international panelists, mainly from the Southern Cone region (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile). The awards handed out included a special recognition from FEMI (Medical Federation of the Interior of Uruguay) for the work of Fernán González Bernaldo de Quirós, Vice-Medical Director for Strategic Planning at the Hospital Italiano.

EHealth Reporter at the Event

“The presence of Ehealth Reporter as one of the only media outlets covering the events was very positive as it informed many professionals of the program in advance,” said Dr. Analía Baum from the Hospital Italiano’s Health IT Department. She added: “The objective for next year will be to add training workshops so those attending can get up to date with key issues such as HI7 computing, Introduction to Medical IT, etc. and also to add more local speakers in addition to professionals from other parts of the world.” Also new this year was the presence of three recognized companies who accompanied the lunches, presenting new products that can help to improve the efficiency of healthcare processes.

These included Microsoft who gave the presentation “Windows 8 in a World of Connected Devices” and, on the last day, the company Inteligentia and Estanislao M. Irigoyen who spoke about “Analyzing Data Easily, Quickly and Intelligently.” Another highlight was the exhibition presented by Dr. Alejandro Pazos (Spain) who together with his team of researchers at the Ibero-NBIC network, or the Ibero-American Network of Convergent Healthcare Technologies, financed by the Ibero-American Science and Technology Program for Development (CYTED), has conducted research into the social impact of Convergent Technologies; Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC). In another field, the Association HL7 Argentina provided oversight and organization in order to promote the latest advances and discuss difficulties related to Digital Agendas in the Latin American region.