Editor's Corner

Just before the HIMSS show takes place in late February, FierceHealthIT will be announcing our first-annual list of the most progressive vendors in health IT. Now, we're journalists and researchers, not the Gartner Group, so I'm not going to try to pick out leaders in each individual health IT sector and assign them to quadrants or rank them by some mathematical criterion. I couldn't do the task justice, and honestly, I don't think that's what we do best. 

Instead, we're going to pick out 15 of the most innovative vendors out there, folks that are showing leadership in cutting edge areas of the healthcare industry, or engaging in knock-your-socks-off, revolutionary new visions of existing niche products rather than routine version 2.1.1 upgrades. What I'm trying to get across, here, is that the Fierce15 awards are about ideas, sometimes off-the-wall ideas, that offer highly-leveraged methods for improving healthcare organizations and even the health system as a whole. I don't give a hoot about marketing collateral or "messaging"-to be honest, I hate getting the stuff-so don't worry if you're a start-up that hasn't spent a million dollars on a PR firm just yet. I'll read your e-mail…I promise.

So here's what I'd like you to do, if you would. Please, just tell me what you consider to be the most innovative areas for health IT technology development out there today. (I'm personally fascinated by advanced remote monitoring technology, robots and virtual reality, but that's just me.) I'd particularly love to know what providers, consultants or IT staffers with their hands in the works every day would like to see created. A cell phone that prints EKG tracings?   Voice-driven physician order entry-systems?  AI systems that understand HIPAA requirements? I don't know-you tell me!  

Anyway, watch this space for more details on the awards process. More will be revealed next week.--Anne