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  • Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025

    Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025

    Las Vegas, NV March 3-6

    Published to clients: March 10, 2025

    Published to readers: March 11, 2025                   

    Published to Email Whispers: June 18, 2025

    Publicly Published with video edition: June 19, 2025

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    The gathering of Health Information and Management Systems Society, 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSS 2025 allowed over 28,000 attendees from 88 countries to gather. Discussions revolved around the pursuit of global health equity, the impact of digitization on revenue growth, and the importance of security in healthcare technology. Thought-provoking questions were raised about common household medical devices, and innovative solutions to improve patient access and operational efficiency were highlighted. The event centers on the intersection of technology and healthcare, emphasizing the need for secure, efficient, and patient-focus approaches to modern medical challenge.

    The Conference

    • The 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSSS 2025 saw over 28,000 attendees gathered with a net gain of over 2,000 attendees from the previous year.
    • The event spanned the Sands convention center at Venetian as well as leveraged the connector bridge and all of Caesars Forum.
    • Attendees titles spanned clinician, IT director, Chief Medical Officer, founder, investor, security analyst, to Chief Privacy officer.

    Cautions

    • At HIMSS the entire expo hall is treated as a patient operating room from a privacy perspective. Thus, if you want press coverage of any type, one must have executed all planning before the start of HIMSS. Press was not allowed to walk up and film attendees without prior authorization. Many first timers at HIMSS were caught off guard by this aspect.

    TAGS:

    ACH payments, aries fraud, aries fraud solutoins, consumer finance, drivers license, fintech, FM25, Fraud, Gitlab, Identiverse, Incentive.ai, Intellicheck, Interface.ai, Money 20/20, MoneyLion, Onbe, OnFido, payments, phone intelligence, Provenir, risk decisioning, Security Metrics, socure, Thetaray, Wysh

    Conference Vibe

    Every event has their own personality and HIMSS 2025, the conference for Health Information and Management Systems Society or HIMSS annual gathering is no different. In Healthcare, data privacy is not just about protecting data. As attendees regularly shared, health data represents a patient’s whole body, a patient’s being, a patient’s life history, the data represents the patient’s life – not to mention individuals can be fined for making mistakes. Thus, one might expect, HIMSS25 was a very, very private conference. A huge no cameras sign welcomed all to the expo hall and Press were required to be prebriefed and reminded multiple times, no advance permission, no video. As a point of comparison, our video to time on site ratio was 50% of what we were able to achieve at CES. Nonetheless, we were able to work with the system and bring you a whopping 37 videos and over 110 minutes of video, endless shorts to enjoy, and research for 4 different research documents including this one. The Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025 playlist is available on our channel for you to enjoy.

    HIMSS welcomed 28,000 attendees to see more than X exhibits and y sessions with over Z startups represented. The energy was quite high as all awaited the show’s opening and the registration lines moved quickly. The Sphere, right next door, even put on a wild psychedelic show to welcome all. Finally, the moment arrived all were waiting for when the Expo Hall Opened. Food could be found for purchase at both locations. The Venetian had their Bistro open with multiple locations throughout the event. Much like SEMA, the Venetian Expo leveraged the bridge connecting it to Caesars Forum which also hosted HIMSS. For those that were at Caesar’s Forum, food was available at the café known as cash-concessions.

    We were able to conduct research for three forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.

    1. Whisper Report: How can AI be effectively integrated into healthcare systems?
    2. Whisper Report: What are the best practices for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare?
    3. Whisper Report:  How can telemedicine be optimized to improve patient care?

    Sessions and Deep Dives

    Due to the restrictive privacy nature of the conference, we could not record any keynotes and sessions were limited but we were still able to capture great research. First, enjoy the press Q&A session held by HIMSS very own President and CEO Hal Wolf. This session covered the gambit including HIMSS instrumental role in ensuring citizens around the world achieve health equity. Their mission is independent of any specific government. He has high hopes that private organizations will step in to compensate for any globally shifting landscapes. TBW Advisors was excited to say that we were able to secure HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf’s answer for the Whisper Report based on Question 1 and Question 2 above. These answers are presented separately from the primary session video. Hal Wolf’s answers to Question 1 and Question 2 are in their respective playlists.

    The Alexander Group provided their framework in the session titled, “From Strategy to Success: Rel World Go To Market Studies”.  This session provided their framework for revenue growth in healthcare through digitizing. The framework nicely summarizes the primary objectives of current investment areas that are occurring within healthcare to grow revenue. The session included a specific case study to drive the point home. The session, “Revolutionizing Healthcare: The AI Powered Stethoscope? During this session, Minttihealth CEO Xiaong Zou left attendees with one important question. “Why is there a thermometer in every home but not a stethoscope!?” For those seeking to secure and extended resilience across endpoints used to manage care and smart technologies, Absolute Security provided a session on a model to secure the health enterprise. Specifically, they leveraged a healthcare model to minimize risk into IT Security.

    Front Office AI Applications

    In healthcare, standard business operations are separate from technologies leveraged to provide healthcare. While both may deal with health data, health operations are significantly riskier and more restrictive. There were innovations serving both aspects of the healthcare system at HIMSS. On the front office side, we found one of those technologies you hope the next doctor you see with has deployed. Relatient’s focus is on enabling patient self-scheduling, even for new patients without using the Patient Portal. No more hold time and spending hours trying to get into the doctors’ office. Relatient purports Practices leveraging the technology have realized 70% of self-scheduling are brand new patients with 30% making their appointments after hours. Xcaliber shared their agentic AI solution for healthcare which can anchor to any of your organization’s data stores. Problems they solve include prior authorization and discharge summaries. Aisera is another agentic AI solution for Healthcare with three separate fully developed ontologies for healthcare ready to go. Aisera purports it is designed to leverage agentic AI to build out new workflows opening the doors to endless possibilities.

    Healthcare Support Applications

    When you move from the front office of healthcare to the back office, many things change. Even the keyboards and mice must be different so they can be sanitized. Fortunately, Man & Machine has waterproof and washable keyboards and mice available. The mice can even be dipped in 10% bleach! Warning, do not try that at home with your equipment!

    Keyboards are not the only devices to support providing health,  doctors leverage many handheld devices. Stethoscopes, blood pressure meters, glucose meters and the likes. Telemedicine and AI are also impacting these medical devices. In turn, these medical devices are also becoming more intelligent and capable of provide remote and real-time data such as those now available by Minttihealth. For those in cybersecurity, at this point your head might start to spin at the possibilities of it all. Have no fear, there were many providers on hand to help including Absolute Security. Absolute Security solutions aim to ensure those end points such as tablet and PC’s in use are secure and resilient.

    Some of those endpoints are more expensive than others. Some may be huge expensive machines. Keeping track of all those assets and ensuring the safety of staff require an intelligent location solution. Cognosos provides an infrastructure light, location intelligence solution for your assets – man or machine.

    Moving on to the care side and practitioner support, Evidently provides clinical summarization and decision support created leveraging actual clinicians. Notice it is a decision support tool as the clinician is ultimately responsible for taking care of the patient. We often refer to this as Human in the Loop or HIL. One interesting capability of Evidently is to provide a very clear line where facts originated. This makes it easy for the clinician to decide to agree or disagree with the technology’s suggestion, ultimately building trust.

    Next Year’s Conference  

    HIMSS 2026 conference will once again be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The announced dates are March 9-13, 2026.

    ©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: APPEX & SEMA  2024

    Conference Whispers: APPEX & SEMA  2024

    Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist: Dr. Doreen Galli

    Published: November 12, 2024                    ID: 2054

    Readers: November 13, 2024

    Email Whispers: April 5, 2025

    ABSTRACT

    After 25 flights of stairs, over 35,000 steps and almost 280 minutes of recording, our coverage of AAPEX and SEMA closes. AAAPEX and SEMA are two different shows that take place at the same time. Together the two shows hosted 160,000 attendees, 2,400 brands, 1400 vehicles across 1.2 million net feet of exhibits. AAPEX specializes in automotive aftermarket replacement parts. In contrast, SEMA focuses on specialty equipment manufacturing that enhance safety, performance, styling, comfort, and convenience of cars, trucks and SUVs. The technology at AAPEX & SEMA spanned pressure, temperature, and oxygen sensors to technology to run the shop to marketing solutions.

    Highlights

    • The technology at AAPEX and SEMA focused on the variety of sensors available to build products to the technology to run the shop or to market the business.

    Cautions

    • Important to realize that technology at a non-technology conference is just a sample of the technology available. Common technologies such as those for marketing can just as easily be leveraged for other SMBs. Likewise, there may be similar solutions that did not come to the specialty industry conference.

    Conference Vibe

    After 25 flights of stairs, over 35,000 steps and almost 280 minutes of recording resulting in 28 videos and a few hundred shorts forthcoming, our coverage of AAPEX and SEMA closes. AAAPEX and SEMA are two different shows that take place at the same time. Together the two shows hosted 160,000 attendees, 2,400 brands, 1400 vehicles across 1.2 million net feet of exhibits. AAPEX, Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo, specializes in automotive aftermarket replacement parts. AAPEX was held at the Venetian. They hosted the new products showcase in the halls outside the exhibitions. The lower-level expo hall hosted Joe’s Garage, wheels, parts for EVs, and the podcasters media row*. APPEX upper-level expo had a variety of lubricants, oil, headlights, taillights, lights simply for tailgating and all things that make vehicles smell good. Food could be found at the Venetian Bistro or the Grab-n-go also at the Venetian. An outdoor beer garden could be found on the way to Caesars Forum connected by a handy walkway. Caesars also hosted exhibits for AAPEX specifically featuring products from China and Taiwan. Caesars’ Forum is connected to a Monorail station that can take one to the Las Vegas convention center for SEMA. Note: Caesars’ Forum is not located at Caesars’ Palace Casino.

    SEMA, Specialty Equipment Market Association, focuses on specialty equipment that enhances safety, performance, styling, comfort, and convenience of cars, trucks, and SUVs. SEMA took place at the Las Vegas Convention Center with its own eateries. SEMA West Hall was full of attachments for pick-up trucks to hold or tow any recreational or sporting equipment one could imagine, film to keep the sun out or wrap to change the vehicle color. A walkway from West Hall connects to LVCC Central Hall or one could ride the Vegas Loop. SEMA Central Hall hosted exhaust, gears, batteries, fuel injection solutions, any engine part one could imagine, transmissions and garage flooring. SEMA South Upper featured power solutions and lifts and collision repair. SEMA South Lower exhibits displayed various propulsion technologies, wheels, rims, and tailgating lights. Seeking to see custom cars? Head to the outdoor exhibits in the parking lots.         

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    Technology and Data Finds

    At TBW Advisors LLC we care most about Technologies and data solutions. The first stop is all about sustainability, a popular topic in any senior staff meeting. If your organization has a fleet of electric vehicles, a portable electric vehicle charger by Ampure may be something to evaluate. No longer needing to find a charging station, this portable charger can leverage any standard outlet and get your EV running! Likewise, when you get your fleet serviced, it may be easier to track your organization’s numbers if the service center leverages Sustainable estimatics by Solera that enables shops to provide carbon footprint estimate for all repairs.

    The second technology stop is all about sensors! MTE is one example of a vendor on hand that shared their oxygen, pressure, and temperature sensors. While smart manufacturing consultants were present, they all turned out to be camera shy. except for Bosch. Bosch had exhibits in multiple Expo Halls across the event. We were able to catch their talk on leveraging vision positioning to improve calibrations. The geospatial data content admittedly gave us flashback to our coverage of Commercial UAV Expo. Another talk discussing leveraging 3d data scanning to significantly save time on custom parts was given on the central stage.

    The third pillar of technology found at AAPEX and SEMA involves software running the shop. We had already mentioned Solera with their sustainable estimatics, ALLDATA is a one stop shop for OEM repair instructions for 95% of all vehicles on the road today. Shopmonkey is a cloud-based solution to run all your automotive bays from scheduling, estimating, inspecting to handling payments. If you are seeking an intelligent automated solution to run your automotive shop, then R.O. WRITER will even ensure you have maintained profits and all your service writers function as your best.

    The final technology stop was all about digital marketing, a topic heavily covered during our analysis of Adobe Summit. Optimize is a general digital marketing solution for any small or medium sized business. Their specialty is handling your google search page, your Facebook and your yelp, ensuring you show up on searches. Autoshop Solutions is a firm specializing in marketing for the aftermarket companies from the website, to search engine optimization to help you find your next customers. On the other end of the spectrum, Epicor Automotive Sector featured an advanced data aggregation solution including ERP and CRM.

    Next Year’s Conference

    Next year’s AAPEX and SEMA will be held in Las Vegas at the Venetian, Caesars Forum, and the Las Vegas Convention Center on November 4-8, 2025.

    ©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking , The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: Commercial UAV Expo 2024

    Conference Whispers: Commercial UAV Expo 2024

    Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photographer: Dr. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    After 12 hours of standing and over 200 minutes of taping, 40 videos and a few hundred shorts forthcoming, our coverage of the Commercial UAV Expo closes. The Commercial UAV Expo 2024 had over 3,000 attendees, Y exhibits and Z keynotes. The attendees travelled from over ZZ countries. The Expo had exhibits and keynotes on how to become a drone pilot to the drones themselves. There were countless examples of the latest technology in all types of UAVs and UASs, including the sensors and equipment they carry. The expo also showcased solutions for remotely operating and managing drone fleets, as well as advanced methods for analyzing geospatial data.

    Highlights

    • Information was provided across the vertical and horizontal spectrum for UAVs, UAS. Note: few were fully autonomous and would be referred to more accurately as remote-controlled helicopters, drones, and marine vehicles.

    Cautions

    • One must understand the use case to select the correct drone or solution route if one doesn’t want to take on the training burden internally.

    Conference Vibe

    After 12 hours of standing and over 200 minutes of taping, 40 videos and a few hundred shorts forthcoming, our coverage of the Commercial UAV Expo closes. The Commercial UAV Expo 2024 had over 3,000 attendees and was one of two conferences held at Caesars Forum not to be confused with Caesars Palace a stroll away. Everything seemed very organized with no significant registration lines on Wednesday morning. Attendees arrived from across the global and each was invited to put a pin on the map to represent where they traveled to attend. For those that had a full event pass, boxed lunches were available; we were able to catch videos of the boxed lunches Wednesday as well as Thursday. The exhibition hall* was open on Tuesday for cocktails, as well as Wednesday and Thursday. Overall, the expo had exhibits and talks on how to become a drone pilot to the drones themselves. There were endless examples of the latest technology in every type of UAV or UAS, to the sensors or equipment they may carry, to solutions to remotely operate and manage fleets of drones to advance solutions for analyzing geospatial data.

    Becoming a Drone Pilot

    One hot topic at the Commercial UAV Expo is getting enough pilots for the industry as most technology today is remote controlled versus truly autonomous. An entire aisle in the exhibit hall was dedicated towards pilot schools including the Pilot Institute. The Pilot Institute even has a free class for those just getting started with a hobby license. Dan Tartaglia from Droneability shared his lessons learned from his journey as a recreational drone pilot to a commercial pilot with his own company. Paul Rossi shared detailed information on his methodology for a pathway to professional drone pilot. Meanwhile, another session by FlyGuys highlighted that if you have a license and equipment, they will hold our hands and give you the settings if needed to help drone pilots to get experience on a 1099 basis.

    Drones

    As one might expect, commercial drones were absolutely the highlight of Commercial UAV Expo. Many drones, like those of Swiss Air are remote-control helicopters. SwissDrones had their remote-controlled helicopter on exhibit along with Phoenix Air Group who manages a fleet of pilots across the US flying Swiss Air Drones. If you might have to travel somewhere before you fly your commercial drone, A2Z drones shared their 4 models during the Press Briefing. A2Z drones also had an extensive display sharing these collapsable charging docks as well as their release hook for packages. Attis Aviation introduced the new ROC VTOL UAV drone with extensive sensors leveraged for firefighting during the Press Competition. During the same event, Drones Amplified demonstrated how their drones are leveraged to create prescribed fires and backburns.

    For the healthcare industry, DrUber shared their solution during the press competition. Dr Uber can be leveraged for cross town emergencies be it organs or blood supplies. If weather interferes with your commercial operations, SwellPro, the pioneer of waterproof drones, was happy to share their solution with you. Of course, if one desired a fully automated drone, one of the more famous consumer manufacturers, DJI shared their Matrice 3d Fully autonomous drone. For the entertainment industry, we found the exciting drone shows. Not just any show but the drones that enable pyrotechnics plus drone lights by Pablo Air.

    The military use case is of course on top of everyone’s mind at the Commercial UAV show. If you were seeking paper or cardboard drones, you were in luck! Often referred to as blue drones, US military drones are not allowed to have components from outside of NATO countries. Harris Aerial shared their NDAA certified drones in the exhibit hall. The press competition shared impressive drone tech from Ukraine. Likewise, the exclusive provider of drones to Israel until 2027, Rhino Drones was also in the competition.  

    Finally, if you want a one stop shop and expect to need a variety of drones or perhaps prefer to lease them, then Exhibitors such as Blue Skies Drones, that manufactures and sells others’ drones was on hand. Frontier Drones provided an extensive tour of their exhibit. As an organization, they represent over 30 different manufacturers.

    Drone Components and attachments

    The key to the success of the industry is working together. Successful integration and successful collaboration dictate agreement on how things work or standards. The drone pilot hub featured a talk on establishing standards to ensure quality. One safety measure that was popular was drone parachutes which are required to enable flight over people in the USA. One vendor, VSS was involved in the press competition. Parazero Drone recover system was on exhibit and demonstrated how the parachute is as easy as buckling a seat belt to attach.

    Drones requiring satellite communication could leverage Gotonomi who presented in the Press competition. Ultrafast optical tracking technology was shared by SixdofSpace. Their optical tracking technology can be leveraged for landing UAVs or UASs. LiDar systems are popular cargo on UAVs but there are so many variations it can make you head spin. One attempt which looks promising is by Balko Tech who shared their Connectiv Modular LiDar solution. Many distributors were validating this solution internally – it will be exciting to see how it plays out!

    A new occurrence due to drones use in warzones is the requirement to operate even if GPS is jammed or spoofed. Annello Photonics shared their Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope (SiPhOGTM). It is the world’s smallest gyroscope on a chip which enables robust navigation that is reliable even in such hostile GPS contested environments. Another challenge of commercial real-world solutions like War is range. Range anxiety is as real for drones as it is for electric car owners. Gas solutions are as loud as a flying lawn mower. How do you triple the range of a UAV? The exciting news is that the UAV industry has a solution in hydrogen engines. Intelligent Energy provided TBW Advisors LLC with a detailed walk around of their hydrogen energy cells. Not only is the range better but hydrogen cells and hydrogen weigh must less over other energy solutions leaving more space for cargo and sensors.

    Fleets

    At the enterprise or sovereign level, there is an additional level of management required. SparrowHawk can identify UAVs in your airspace – friendly or hostile! flytebase provides an enterprise done autonomy software and platform for advanced field placement. Together it enables complete remote management of one’s fleet of drones. If you are seeking to manage the drones, missions and airspace with one piece of software, Anra Technologies shared their effortless solution. For enterprises just looking to get started and have no idea what drone is appropriate let alone how to build the entire solution to get the mission accomplished, Attis Aviation was in the exhibit hall to share their story of helping customers realize their UAV solutions.

    Geospatial Data

    Geospatial data is an exciting area within data that is critical for UAVs. Geospatial data has to do with the real world and is three-dimensional information about a space. Geospatial data is considered time-based data related to that exact location on earth. GeoCue shared their out of the box LP360 solution for evaluating LiDar information. This enables organizations to take the information from the LiDar and processes providing information that humans recognize and can leverage. Sense Aeronautics took great pride in their drone video analytics solution and its ability to recognize humans or cars coming into the monitored scene. Assetta has a specialty solution to detect red tide when spotted by drones. Dat/em also specialized in drone’s famous stereo image and makes it useful for customers, providing a coherent image as expected by clients. Finally, those that just want the data and don’t want to mess around with drones or getting the data useful, FlyGuys is a (DSP) data service provider that provides that exact service!

    Next Year’s Conference

    Next year’s Commercial UAV Expo will be once again held at Caesars Forum on September 2-4, 2025.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    ©2019-20204 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Vendor Whispers, Technical Business Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Rankings and Fact-based Research and Advisory are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • ­­­Conference Whispers: Customer Care Week LV 2024

    ­­­Conference Whispers: Customer Care Week LV 2024

    Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photographer: Dr. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    After over 750 minutes of recording and two lengthy walks from Caesars to Caesars Forum, and some 30 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 Customer Care Week Las Vegas comes to a close. Customer Care Week was held at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas from June 3-6. It is the premier event for customer care professionals. It spans 4 days, 300 speakers in over 165 sessions, and 5000 onsite attendees. Attendees witnessed endless examples of customer care solutions be they entire platforms, components for a solution or a services company to deploy the solution.

    Analysis only available to clients at this time.