At least 70 vendors have invited me to meet with them at the upcoming conference (Feb. 20-24) in Orlando of the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS). To say that there's a lot going on in health IT these days is an understatement.

Going through the list of invites, I notice some obvious trends: First, health information exchanges and interoperability are hotter than ever, and a number of vendors will be showing how well they can exchange data at HIMSS' Interoperability Showcase on the exhibit floor. In fact, this is one of health IT guru John Halamka's top picks for the HIMSS conference.

The just-announced Direct Project, a standardized, secure messaging protocol for exchanging documents between disparate information systems and between providers and patients, also is sure to get a lot of attention. Among the exhibitors touting their Direct Project involvement will be Vision Share, which hosted the first exchange of data using Direct in the country. In addition, Quest subsidiary MedPlus will tout the hookup of its Care360 EHR lite with Direct, and Microsoft will unveil the details of how patients can use Direct to upload clinical data to HealthVault.

To learn more:
- learn more about the conference at the HIMSS website
- read this Health Data Management piece about Halamka's HIMSS plans 

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